
Class T350q 
Book • --3, 
Copightl^? 

CSEHUGHT DEPOSIT, 



THE FORUM OF 

DEMOCRACY 



BY 



DWIGHT EVERETT WATKINS 

PROFESSOR OF PUBLIC SPEAKING 
KNOX COLLEGE, GALESBURG, ILLINOIS 



ROBERT EDWARD WILLIAMS 

INSTRUCTOR IN PUBLIC SPEAKING 
KNOX COLLEGE 



Government of the people, by the people, 
and for the people, shall not perish from 
the earth- 

. — Lincoln. 



ALLYN AND BACON 

Bogton Neto gork Chicago 



JQ503 
, VV39 



COPYRIGHT, 1917 

BY DWIGHT E. WATKINS 

AND ROBERT E. WILLIAMS 



-5ISi8 



Nottoooli i^rfSB 

J. S. Gushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Oo. 

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



©CI.A479855 



PREFACE 

The aim of this book is to inspire patriotism, to set forth 
the democratic ideals of the United States and its associates 
in the Great War, and at the same time to furnish classes 
in reading and speaking with a new, interesting, and stimu- 
lating collection of the writings and speeches of the master 
minds of to-day. 

Not only are these selections valuable for reading and 
for study, they are filled with a dramatic appeal and an 
intensity of feeling and purpose which make them espe- 
cially suited to classes in declamation. 

Men feel deeply, think earnestly, and speak sincerely in 
times of tragic crisis. Under these conditions oratory flour- 
ishes. Such was the case in 1775, when Patrick Henry, 
James Otis, and others called down the wrath of the people 
of the new world on the tyranny of the old ; such was the 
case in '61 and the white-hot years preceding, when Cal- 
houn and Webster, Beecher and Lincoln set forth the con- 
flicting views on slavery and union. 

To-day, as in the past, men's truest thoughts and highest 
aspirations are being given to the world by her great states- 
men and thinkers. Out of this furnace-heat of conflict 
thoughts have been given expression, ideals voiced, and 
convictions stated, so forceful in character and so beautiful 
in form that they deserve a permanent place in the litera- 
ture of coming generations. 

The sources have been many and varied. British pam- 
phlets, the Bulletin of the Paris Chamber of Commerce, and 
the newspaper reports to the United States have been freely 



IV PREFACE 

drawn upon. Especially valuable has been the assistance 
of the New York Times Current History Magazine, without 
whose kind permission to reprint various copyrighted ex- 
tracts this little volume would have been impossible. 

D. E. W. 
R. E. W. 

November, 1917. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

PAGE 

England Unsheathes the Sword . Herbert Henry Asquith 1 
September 5, 1914. 

Now the War Has Come . . . Winston Churchill 4 
September 11, 1914. 

Belgium's Plea to the President Henry Carton de Wiart 7 
September 16, 1914. 

The President's Reply Woodrow Wilson 10 

September 16, 1914. 

The Plain Dictates of Our Duty Herbert Henry Asquith 12 
October 2, 1914. 

The Soldier of 1914 (1) Rene Doumic 14 

October 26, 1914. 

The Soldier of 1914 (11) Rene Doumic 19 

October 26, 1914. 

Certainty of Victory .... Rene Raphael Viviani 22 
December 22, 1914. 

Belgium Shall Rise Cardinal Mercier 24 

December 25, 1914. 

There Must Be No Delay . . . David Lloyd George 28 
February 8, 1915. 

Allies' Conditions of Peace . . . Sir Edward Grey 32 

March 22, 1915. 

America for Humanity Woodrow Wilson 35 

May 17, 1915. 

V 



Vi TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Address to the Fighters of France . . Anatole France 38 
July 14, 1915. 

EvivA L' Italia William Archer 42 

July, 1915. 

Russia's Heart Michael Rodzianko 46 

August 1, 1915. 

The War and the Jews .... Israel Zangwill 49 

August, 1915. 

America's Part Sir Gilbert Parker 53 

August, 1915. 

Plea for Peace Pope Benedict 56 

August, 1915. 

A Struggle between Two Worlds . . . Take Jonescu 59 
December 16, 1915. 

It Can Be Done David Lloyd George 62 

December 20, 1915. 

Belgium's Debt to France . . Henry Carton de Wiart 65 
March 11, 1916. 

Toast to Premier Asquith .... Antonio Salandra 67 
March 28, 1916. 

Toast to Italy and Signor Salandra Herbert Henry Asquith 69 
March 28, 1916. 

The Significance of the Conflict . . . Baron Rosen 72 
June, 1916. 

The Role of France in This War . Raymond Poincare 75 

July 14, 1916. 

Verdun Raymond Poincare 78 

September 13, 1916. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS vii 

PARE 

The War's Legacy of Hatred . . Maurice Maeterlinck 80 
October, 1916. 

France and the New Commandments . . Paul Deschanel 84 
October 26, 1916. 

The Day of the Dead .... Maurice Maeterlinck 88 
November 1, 1916. 

England's Answer .... David Lloyd George 90 

December 19, 1916. 

A League for Peace Woodrow Wilson 96 

January 22, 1917. 

France United in the Cause of Right . Paul Deschanel 101 
February, 1917. 

America Breaks with Germany . . . Woodrow Wilson 104 
February 3, 1917. 

Democracy and the War .... Albert Thomas 106 
February 22, 1917. 

The President's War Message . . . Woodrow Wilson 109 
April 2, 1917. 

France Congratulates America . . Raymond Poincare 112 

April 5, 1917. 

Message to America .... David Lloyd George 114 
April 6, 1917. 

Greetings from a Sister Republic M. Ribot and M. Deschanel 116 
April 6, 1917. 

America, a Beacon Light of Peace . Gabriele D'Annunzio 121 
April 8, 1917. 

America Enters the War . . . David Lloyd George 124 
April 12, 1917. 



Vlll TABLE OF CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Great Days for the Republic . . Walter Hines Page 127 
April 12, 1917. 

Comrades in a Common Cause . . . Bishop Brent 129 

April 20, 1917. 

France Gives You Greeting .... Rene Viviani 131 

April 27, 1917. 

The Flag on the Firing Line . . Theodore Roosevelt 134 
April 28, 1917. 

The Rights of Mankind . . . Theodore Roosevelt 137 
April 28, 1917. 

A T ^w ^^^^ Viviani "i , 

At the Tomb of Washington . . , „ >■ 140 

Arthur James Balfour J 

April 29, 1917. 

Our Heritage of Liberty Rene Viviani 143 

May 1, 1917. 

The Oldest Free Assemblies . Arthur James Balfour 146 

May 5, 1917. 

_ , Thomas R. Marshall ) , -^ 

Champions of Liberty ... „ ,, )■ 150 

Prince Udine J 

May 31, 1917. 

_ Thomas R. Marshall"! ..^ 

Liberty or Death .... ,^ ,, >- 155 

Baron Moncheur J 

June 22, 1917. 

Slaves or Freemen ? . . . . Alexander Kerensky 160 
May, 1917. 

America Greets the Russian Republic . Woodrow Wilson 164 
June 11, 1917. 

The Voice of American Labor . . . Samuel Gompers 166 
May 6, 1917. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS IX 



PAGE 



. _ _ Thomas R. Marshall i 

A Grave Situation • • . „ >■ 169 

Ambassador Bakhmetieff J 

June 26, 1917. 

Why Are We Fighting Germany? . . Franklin K. Lane 174 
June 4, 1917. 

Free from the German Yoke . . . ^Max F. Meyer 179 
August 13, 1917. 

The German-American Hans Zinsser 181 

October 1, 1917. 

The Menace of Prussianism . . . Otto H. Kahn 182 

September 26, 1917. 

The Basis for Enduring Peace . . . Woodrow Wilson 187 
August 27, 1917. 



THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

ENGLAND UNSHEATHES THE SWORD 

Premier Asquith 

My Lord Mayor and Citizens of London : It is three 
and a half years since I last had the honor of addressing 
in this hall a gathering of the citizens. We were then met 
under the Presidency of one of your predecessors, men of 
all creeds and parties, to celebrate and approve the joint 
declaration of the two great English-speaking States that 
for the future any differences between them should be 
settled, if not by agreement, at least by judicial inquiry 
and arbitration, and never in any circumstances by war. 
Those of us who hailed that great Eirenicon between 
the United States and ourselves as a landmark on the 
road of progress were not sanguine enough to think, 
or even to hope, that the era of war was drawing to a 
close. But still less were we prepared to anticipate the 
terrible spectacle which now confronts us of a contest 
which for the number and importance of the powers 

On September 5, 1914, soon after the outbreak of the war, Prime 
Minister Asquith addressed a great body of people at the Guildhall in 
London. 

The Right Honorable Herbert Henry Asquith was born at Morley, 
Yorkshire, in 1852 and was educated at the City of London School and at 
Balliol College, Oxford. Mr. Asquith had held many high offices in the 
gift of the British nation before he became Prime Minister in 1908. He 
was superseded in this office by David Lloyd George in January of 1917. 

1 



2 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

engaged, the scale of their armaments and armies, the 
width of the theater of conflict, the outpouring of blood 
and the loss of life, the incalculable toll of suffering levied 
upon non-combatants, the material and moral loss accu- 
mulating day by day to the higher interests of civilized 
mankind — a contest which in every one of these as- 
pects is without precedent in the annals of the world. 
We were very confident three years ago in the right- 
ness of our position, when we welcomed the new 
securities for peace. We are equally confident in it to- 
day, when reluctantly, and against our will, but with a 
clear judgment and a clean conscience we find our- 
selves involved with the whole strength of this empire 
in a bloody arbitration between might and right. The 
issue has passed out of the domain of argument into 
another field, but let me ask you, and through you the 
world outside, what would have been our condition as a 
nation to-day if we had been base enough through timid- 
ity or through perverted calculation of self-interest, or 
through a paralysis of the sense of honor and duty (cheers), 
if we had been base enough to be false to our word and 
faithless to our friends ? 

Our eyes would have been turned at this moment with 
those of the whole civilized world to Belgium, a small 
State, which has lived for more than seventy years under 
the several and collective guarantee to which we in com- 
mon with Prussia and Austria were parties, and we should 
have seen at the instance and by the action of two of these 
guaranteeing powers her neutrality violated, her inde- 
pendence strangled, her territory made use of as afford- 
ing the easiest and the most convenient road to a war of 
unprovoked aggression against France. We, the British 
people, would at this moment have been standing by with 
folded arms and with such countenance as we could com- 



PREMIER ASQUITH 3 

mand while this small and unprotected State, in defense 
of her vital liberties, made a heroic stand against over- 
weening and overwhelming force; we should have been 
admiring as detached spectators the siege of Liege, the 
steady and manful resistance of a small army to the occu- 
pation of their capital, with its splendid traditions and 
memories, the gradual forcing back of the patriotic de- 
fenders of their native land to the ramparts of Antwerp, 
countless outrages inflicted by buccaneering levies exacted 
from the unoffending civil population, and, finally, the 
greatest crime committed against civilization and culture 
since the Thirty Years' War, the sack of Lou vain, with 
its buildings, its pictures, its unique library, its unrivaled 
associations — a shameless holocaust of irreparable treas- 
ures lit up by blind barbarian vengeance. What account 
should we, the Government and the people of this country, 
have been able to render to the tribunal of our national 
conscience and sense of honor, if, in defiance of our 
plighted and solemn obligations, we had endured, nay, 
if we had not done our best to prevent, yes, and to 
avenge these intolerable outrages? For my part I say 
that sooner than be a silent witness — which means in 
effect a willing accomplice — of this tragic triumph of 
force over law and of brutality over freedom, I would see 
this country of ours blotted out of the pages of history. 
(Prolonged cheers.) 



NOW THE WAR HAS COME 
Winston Churchill 

This is the same great European war that would have 
been fought in the year 1909 if Russia had not humbled 
herself and given way to German threats. It is the same 
war that Sir Edward Grey stopped last year. Now it 
has come upon us. If you look back across the long 
periods of European history to the original cause, you 
will, I am sure, find it in the cruel terms enforced upon 
France in the year 1870, and in the repeated bullyings 
and attempts to terrorize France which have been the 
characteristic of German policy ever since. The more 
you study this question the more you will see that the 
use the Germans made of their three aggressive and 
victorious wars against Denmark, against Austria, and 
against France has been such as to make them the terror 
and the bully of Europe, the enemy and the menace of 
every small State upon their borders, and a perpetual 
source of unrest and disquietude to their powerful neigh- 
bors. (Cheers.) 

Now the war has come, and when it is over let us be 
careful not to make the same mistake or the same sort 

This is an extract from a speech delivered at the London Opera 
House, September 11, 1914. 

The Right Honorable Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was born 
November 30, 1874. He became a member of Parliament in 1900. In 
turn he held the following offices under the British Crown — Under- 
Secretary of State for the Colonies, President of the Board of Trade, 
and Home Secretary. From 1911 to 1915 he was First Lord of the 
Admiralty. He is now an officer, serving in the British army. 

4 



WINSTON CHURCHILL 5 

of mistake as Germany made when she had France pros- 
trate at her feet in 1870. Let us, whatever we do, fight 
for and work toward great and sound principles for the 
European system. And the first of those principles 
which we should keep before us is the principle of nation- 
ahty — that is to say, not the conquest or subjugation 
of any great community or of any strong race of men, 
but the setting free of those races which have been sub- 
jugated and conquered ; and if doubt arises about dis- 
puted areas of country we should try to settle their 
ultimate destination in the reconstruction of Europe 
which must follow from this war with a fair regard to the 
wishes and feelings of the people who live in them. 

That is the aim which, if it is achieved, will justify 
the exertions of the war and will make some amends to 
the world for the loss and suffering, the agony of suffer- 
ing, which it has wrought and entailed, and which will 
give to those who come after us not only the pride which 
we hope they will feel in remembering the martial achieve- 
ments of the present age of Britain, but which will give 
them also a better and fairer world to live in and a Europe 
free from the causes of hatred and unrest which have 
poisoned the comity of nations and ruptured the peace 
of Christendom. 

I use these words because this is a war in which we are 
all together, all classes, all races, all States, principalities, 
dominions, and powers throughout the British Empire 
— we are all together. Years ago the elder Pitt urged 
upon his countrymen the compulsive invocation, "Be 
one people." It has taken us till now to obey his ap- 
peal, but now we are together, and while we remain one 
people there are no forces in the world strong enough to 
beat us down or break us up. (Cheers.) 

I hope, even in this dark hour of strife and struggle, 



6 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

that the unity which has been estabhshed in our country 
under the pressure of war will not cease when the great 
military effort upon which we are engaged and the great 
moral causes which we are pursuing have been achieved. 
I hope, and I do not think my hope is a vain one, that 
the forces which have come together in our islands and 
throughout our empire may continue to work together, 
not only in a military struggle, but to try to make our 
country more quickly a happier and more prosperous 
land, where social justice and free institutions are more 
firmly established than they have been in the past. If 
that is so we shall not have fought in vain at home as well 
as abroad. 

With these hopes and in this belief I would urge you, 
laying aside all hindrance, thrusting away all private 
aims, to devote yourselves unswervingly and unflinch- 
ingly to the vigorous and successful prosecution of the 
war. (Loud cheers.) 



BELGIUM'S PLEA TO THE PRESIDENT 
Henry Carton de Wiart 

Excellency : His Majesty the King of the Belgians 
has charged us with a special mission to the President of 
the United States. 

Let me say to you how much we feel ourselves honored 
to have been called upon to express the sentiments of our 
King and of our whole nation to the illustrious statesman 
whom the American people have called to the highest 
dignity of the Commonwealth. 

As far as I am concerned, I have already been able, 
during a previous trip, to appreciate fully the noble vir- 
tues of the American Nation, and I am happy to take 
this opportunity to express all the admiration with which 
they inspire me. 

Ever since her independence was first established, 
Belgium has been declared neutral in perpetuity. This 
neutrality guaranteed by the powers has recently been 
violated by one of them. Had we consented to abandon 
our neutrality for the benefit of one of the belligerents, 
we would have betrayed our obligations toward the 
others. And it was the sense of our international obliga- 
tions as well as that of our dignity and honor that has 
driven us to resistance. 



M. Henry Carton de Wiart, as head of the Belgian "Commission" 
to the United States, on September 16, 1914, addressed an appeal to the 
President and the people of the United States against German inhumani- 
ties to the Belgians. M. de Wiart was at the time Belgian Minister of 
Justice. President Wilson's reply follows. 

7 



8 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

The consequences suffered by the Belgian Nation were 
not confined purely to the harm occasioned by the forced 
march of an invading army. This army not only seized 
a great portion of our territory, but it committed incred- 
ible acts of violence, the nature of which is contrary to the 
law of nations. Peaceful inhabitants were massacred, de- 
fenseless women and children were outraged, open and 
undefended towns were destroyed, historical and religious 
monuments were reduced to dust, and the famous library 
of the University of Louvain was given to the flames. 

Our Government has appointed a judicial commis- 
sion to make an official investigation, so as to examine 
thoroughly and impartially the facts and to determine 
the responsibility thereof, and I will have the honor, 
Excellency, to hand over to you the proceedings of the 
inquiry. 

In this frightful holocaust which is sweeping all over 
Europe, the United States has adopted a neutral attitude. 
And it is for this reason that your country, standing 
apart from either one of the belligerents, is in the best 
position to judge, without bias or partiality, the condi- 
tions under which the war is being waged. 

It is at the request, even at the initiative, of the United 
States that all civilized nations have formulated and 
adopted at The Hague a law regulating the laws and 
usage of war. 

We refuse to believe that war has abolished the family 
of civilized powers, or the regulations to which they have 
freely consented. 

The American people has always displayed its respect 
for justice, its search for progress, and an instinctive 
attachment for the laws of humanity. Therefore, it 
has won a moral influence which is recognized by the 
entire world. It is for this reason that Belgium, bound 



HENRY CARTON DB WIART 9 

as she is to you by ties of commerce and increasing friend- 
ship, turns to the American people at this time to let you 
know the real truth of the present situation. Resolved 
to continue unflinching defense of its sovereignty and 
independence, it deems it a duty to bring to the attention 
of the civilized world the innumerable grave breaches of 
rights of mankind of which she has been a victim. 

At the very moment we were leaving Belgium, the 
King recalled to us his trip to the United States and the 
vivid and strong impression your powerful and virile 
civilization left upon his mind. 

Our faith in your fairness, our confidence in your jus- 
tice, in your spirit of generosity and sympathy — all 
these have dictated our present mission. 



THE PRESIDENT'S REPLY 

Permit me to say with what sincere pleasure I receive 
you as representatives of the King of the Belgians, a 
people for whom the people of the United States feel so 
strong a friendship and admiration, a King for whom 
they entertain so sincere a respect, and express my hope 
that we may have many opportunities of earning and 
deserving their regard. 

You are not mistaken in believing that the people of 
this country love justice, seek the true paths of progress, 
and have a passionate regard for the rights of humanity. 

It is a matter of profound pride to me that I am per- 
mitted for a time to represent such a people and to be 
their spokesman, and I am proud that your King should 
have turned to me in time of distress as to one who would 
wish on behalf of the people he represents to consider the 
claims to the impartial sympathy of mankind of a nation 
which deems itself wronged. 

I thank you for the document you have put in my 
hands containing the result of an investigation made by 
a judicial committee appointed by the Belgian Govern- 
ment to look into the matter of which you have come 

Addressed to the Royal Belgian Commission in the White House, 
September 16, 1914. 

Woodrow Wilson was born of Scotch-Irish parents at Staunton, 
Virginia, December 28, 1856. His early education was obtained in 
private schools, and he holds degrees from a number of large universi- 
ties. After practicing law for a short time, he became a teacher, and 
he was made president of Princeton University in 1902. From Gover- 
nor of New Jersey, to which position he was elected in 1908, he became 
President of the United States in 1912. He was reSlected in 1916. 

10 



WOODROW WILSON 11 

to speak. It shall have my utmost attentive perusal 
and my most thoughtful consideration. 

You will, I am sure, not expect me to say more. Pres- 
ently, I pray God very soon, this war will be over. The 
day of accounting will then come, when, I take it for 
granted, the nations of Europe will assemble to determine 
a settlement. Where wrongs have been committed their 
consequences and the relative responsibility involved will 
be assessed. 

The nations of the world have, fortunately, by agree- 
ment made a plan for such a reckoning and settlement. 
What such a plan cannot compass, the opinion of man- 
kind, the final arbiter in such matters, will supply. It 
would be unwise, it would be premature, for a single 
Government, however fortunately separated from the 
present struggle, it would be inconsistent with the neu- 
tral position of any nation, which, like this, has no part 
in the contest, to form or express a final judgment. 

I need not assure you that this conclusion, in which I 
instinctively feel that you will yourselves concur, is 
spoken frankly because in warm friendship, and as the 
best means of perfect understanding between us, an under- 
standing based upon mutual respect, admiration, and 
cordiality. 

You are most welcome, and we are greatly honored that 
you should have chosen us as the friends before whom 
you could lay any matter of vital consequence to your- 
selves, in the confidence that your cause would be under- 
stood and met in the same spirit in which it was conceived 
and intended. 



THE PLAIN DICTATES OF OUR DUTY 
Herbert Henry Asquith 

Four weeks ago, speaking at the Guildhall, in the City 
of London, when the war was still in its early days, I 
asked my fellow countrymen with what countenance, 
with what conscience, had we basely chosen to stand aloof, 
we could have watched from day to day the terrible un- 
rolling of events — public faith shamelessly broken, the 
freedom of a small people trodden in the dust, the wanton 
invasion of Belgium and then of France by hordes who 
leave behind them at every stage of their progress a dis- 
mal trail of savagery, of devastation, and of desecration 
worthy of the blackest annals in the history of barbarism. 
That was four weeks ago. The war has now lasted for 
sixty days, and every one of those days has added to 
the picture its share of somber and repulsive traits. We 
now see clearly written down in letters of carnage and 
spoliation the real aims and methods of this long-prepared 
and well-organized scheme against the liberties of Europe. 
(Cheers.) 

I say nothing of other countries. I pass no judgment 
upon them. But if we here in Great Britain had abstained 
and remained neutral, forsworn our word, deserted our 
friends, faltered and compromised with the plain dictates 
of our duty — nay, if we had not shown ourselves ready 
to strike with all our forces at the common enemy of 
civilization and freedom, there would have been nothing 
left for our country but to veil her face in shame and to be 

In the fall of 1914 Mr. Asquith made a tour of the British Isles 
"Bummoning the nation to war." This is an extract of his speech at 
Cardiff on October 2, 1914. 

12 



HERBERT HENRY ASQUITH 13 

ready in her turn — for her time would have come — to 
share the doom which she would have richly deserved, 
and after centuries of glorious life to go down to her 
grave, unwept, unhonored, and unsung. (Loud cheers.) 

Let us gladly acknowledge what becomes clearer and 
clearer every day, that the world is just as ready as it 
ever was and no part of it readier than the British Empire, 
to understand and to respond to moral issues. The new 
school of German thought has been teaching for a gen- 
eration past that in affairs of nations there is no code of 
ethics. According to their doctrine force and nothing 
but force is the test and the measure of right. As the 
events which are going on before our eyes have made it 
plain, they have succeeded only too well in indoctrinating 
with their creed — I will not say the people of Germany ; 
like Burke, I will not attempt to draw up an indictment 
against a nation — I will not say the people of Germany, 
but those who control and execute German policy. 
(Cheers.) 

But it is one of those products of German genius 
which, whether or not it was intended exclusively for 
home consumption, has not, I am happy to say, found a 
market abroad, and certainly not within the boundaries 
of the British Empire. We still beheve here, old-fash- 
ioned people as we are, in the sanctity of treaties, that 
the weak have rights and that the strong have duties, 
that small nationalities have every bit as good a title as 
large ones to Hfe and independence, and that freedom for 
its own sake is as well worth fighting for to-day as it ever 
was in the past. And we look forward at the end of this 
war to a Europe in which these great and simple and ven- 
erable truths will be recognized and safeguarded forever 
against the recrudescence of the era of blood and iron. 
(Cheers.) 



THE SOLDIER OF 1914 

Rene Doumic 
Extract One 

The soldier of 1914, We think only of him. We live 
only for him, just as we live only through him. I have 
not chosen this subject; it has forced itself upon me. 
My only regret is that I come here in academician's 
costume, with its useless sword, to speak to you about 
those whose uniforms are torn by bullets, whose rifles 
are black with powder. 

And I am ashamed, above all, of placing so feeble a 
voice at the service of so great a cause. But what do 
words matter, when the most brilliant of them would 
pale before acts of which each day makes us the wit- 
nesses? For these acts we have only words, but let us 
hope that these, coming from the heart, may bring to 
those who are fighting for their country somewhere 
near the frontier the spirit of our gratitude and the 
fervor of our admiration. 

Our history is nothing but the history of French valor, 
so ingenious in adopting new forms and adapting itself 
each time to the changing conditions of warfare. Sol- 

Ren6 Doumic, celebrated critic and Member of the French Academy, 
delivered this wonderful address to the Academy on October 26, 1914. 
According to the report of the Paris Figaro, "every sentence, every word 
of it was punctuated with acclamations from the audience." 

We have taken two cuttings from this famous address. The other 
will be found under the same caption, but marked Extract Two. The 
speech will be found in its entirety in Volume I of the Current History 
Magazine. 

14 



RENfi DOUMIC 15 

diers of the King or of the repubHc, old "grognards" of 
Napoleon, who always growled yet followed just the 
same, youngsters who bit their cartridges with childish 
lips, veterans of fights in Africa, cuirassiers of Reichs- 
hofen, gardes-mohiles of the Loire, all, at the moment of 
duty and sacrifice, did everything that France expected 
of her sons. 

So, too, for this war, the soldier needed has arisen. 
After so many heroics he has invented a new form of 
heroism. 

I say the soldier, for the soldier is what one must say. 
Here begins what is clearly expressed in one phrase only 
— the French miracle. This national union in which all 
opinions have become fused is merely a reflection of the 
unity which has been suddenly created in our army. 

When war broke out it found military France ready 
and armed ; mere troopers, officers none of whom ever 
thought that he would one day lead his men under fire, 
and that admirable General Staff which, never allowing 
itself to be deflected from its purpose, did its work silent 
and aloof. 

But there was beside this France another France, the 
France of civilians, accustomed by long years of peace 
to disbelieve in war ; which, in conjuring up a picture of 
Europe delivered over to fire and blood, could not con- 
ceive that any human being in the world would assume the 
responsibility for such an act before history. War sur- 
prised the employee at his desk, the workman in his work- 
shop, the peasant in his field. It snatched them from the 
intimacy of their hearths, from the amenities of family 
life which in France is sweeter than elsewhere. These 
men were obliged to leave behind beings whom they loved 
tenderly. For the last time they clasped in their arms the 
beloved partners of their lives, so deeply moved yet so 



16 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

proud, and their children, the eldest of whom have under- 
stood and will never forget. And all of them, artist and 
artisan, priest and teacher, those who dreamed of revenge 
and those who dreamed of the fraternity of nations, those 
of every age, as they stepped into their places, were en- 
dowed with the soul of the soldier of France, every one 
of them, and became thus the same soldier. 

The war which lay in wait for these men, many of 
whom did not seem made for war, was a war of which 
nobody had ever seen the like. We have heard tell of 
wars of giants, of battles of nations, but nobody had ever 
seen a war extending from the Marne to the Vistula, nor 
battles with a front of hundreds of kilometers, lasting 
weeks without respite day or night, fought by millions of 
men. Never in its worst nightmares had hallucinated 
imagination conjured up the progress made in the art of 
mowing down human lives. The German Army, to 
which the German Nation has never refused anything, 
either moral support or money, the nerve of war, has 
been able to profit by all this progress, to reduce to a 
formula the violence which drives forward the attack, 
to prepare the spy system which watches over the un- 
armed foe, to organize even incendiarism, and to become 
thus, forged by forty-four years of hatred, the most for- 
midable tool of destruction that has ever sown ruin and 
death. 

The Germans arrived, with the irresistible impetus of 
their masses, with the fury of a tempest, with the roar 
of thunder, enraged at having been confronted on their 
road by that little Belgian Nation which has just inscribed 
its name among the first on the roster of heroism. Already 
the German chiefs imagined themselves lords of Paris, 
which they threatened to reduce to ashes — and which 
did not tremble. 



RENfi DOUMIC 17 

It was to meet this colossus of war that our little sol- 
dier marched forth. And he made it fall back. 

To this new war he brings his old quahties of all time. 
Courage — let us not speak of that. Can one speak of 
courage? Just read the short sentences in the army- 
orders. 

Corporal Voituret of the Second Dragoons, mortally- 
wounded on a reconnaissance, cries : " Vive la France ! 
I die for her! I die happy!" Private Chabannes of 
the Eighteenth Chasseurs, unhorsed and wounded, 
replies to the Major who asks him why he had not sur- 
rendered : "We Frenchmen never surrender!" And 
remember those who, mortally wounded, stick to their 
posts so as to fight to the end with their men, and those 
wounded men who have but one desire — every one of 
us can vouch for this — to return to the firing line ! 
And that one who, hopelessly mutilated, said to me : 
"It is not being crippled that hurts me; it is that I shall 
not be able to see the best part of the thing!" These, 
and the others, the thousands of others, shall we speak of 
their courage ? — what would it mean to speak of their 
courage ? 

And the dash of them ! — the only criticism to which 
they lay themselves open is that they are too fiery, that 
they do not wait the right moment for the charge, in 
order to drive back the enemy at the point of the bayonet. 
What spirit ! What gayety ! All the letters from our 
soldiers are overflowing with cheerfulness. Where, for 
instance, does that nickname come from applied by them 
to the enemy — the "Boches"? It comes from where so 
many more have come ; its author is nobody and every- 
body ; it is the spontaneous product of that Gallic humor 
which jokes at danger, takes hberties with it. 

What pride ! What sense of honor ! Whereas the 



18 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

German officer, posted behind his men, drives them for- 
ward hke a flock of sheep, revolver in his hand and in- 
sults on his lips, we, on our side, hear nothing but those 
beautiful, those radiant words: "Forward! For your 
country!" — the call of the French officer to his chil- 
dren, whom he impels forward by giving them the exam- 
ple, by plunging under fire first, before all of them, at 
their head. 

And — supreme adornment of all — with what grace 
they deck their gallantry ! A few seconds before being 
killed by an exploding shell. Colonel Doury, ordered to re- 
sist to the last gasp, replies : "All right ! We will resist. 
And now, boys, here is the password: Smile!" It is 
Hke a flower thrown on the scientific brutality of modern 
war, that memory of the days when men went to war 
with lace on their sleeves. There we recognize the French 
soldier such as we have always known him through fif- 
teen centuries of the history of France. 



THE SOLDIER OF 1914 
Rene Doumic 

Extract Two 

Let us say it in a word : Never have great things been 
done so simply. 

The soldier of 1914 knows why he is fighting. It is not 
for the ambition of a sovereign nor the impatience of his 
heir, not for the arrogance of a caste of country squires nor 
for the profit of a firm of merchants. No ; he fights for 
the land where he was born and where his dead sleep; 
he fights to free his invaded country and give her back 
her lost provinces, for her past, struck to the heart by 
the shells that bombarded the Cathedral of Rheims ; he 
fights so that his children may have the right to think, 
speak, and feel in French, so that there may still be in 
the world a French race, which the world needs. For 
this war of destruction is aimed at the destruction of our 
race, and our race has been moved to its depths. It 
has risen as one man strong and united; it has called 
up from its remotest history all its energy, in order to 
reincarnate them in the person of him whose duty is to 
defend the race to-day ; it has inspired in him the valor of 
the knights of old, the endurance of the laborer bending 
over his furrow, the modesty of the old masters who made 
of our cathedrals masterpieces of anonymity, the honesty 
of the bourgeois, the patience of humble folk, the con- 
sciousness of duty which mothers teach to their children, 
all those virtues which, developed from one generation to 

19 



20 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

another, become a tradition, the tradition of an industrious 
people, made strong by a long past and made to endure. 
It is these qualities, all of them together, which we ad- 
mire in the soldier of 1914, the complete and superb type 
of the entire race. 

When it has such an aim, the noblest of all, war is 
sublime; all who go into it are as if transfigured. It 
exalts, expands, and purifies souls. On approaching the 
battlefield a holy intoxication, a holy happiness, takes 
possession of those for whom has been reserved the su- 
preme joy of braving death for their country. Death is 
everywhere, but they do not believe in it any more. 
And when, on certain mornings, to the sound of cannon 
that mix their rumblings with mystic voices of bells, in 
the devastated church which cries to the heavens through 
every breach opened in its walls, the Chaplain blesses the 
regiment that he will accompany the next minute to the 
firing line, every head will be bent at the same time and 
all will feel on their brows the breath of God. 

Alas ! the beauty of the struggle does not hide from 
me its sadness. How many went away, full of youth and 
hope, to return no more. How many have fallen already 
without seeing realized what they so ardently desired; 
sowers they, who to make the land fertile have watered 
it with their blood, yet will not see the harvest. 

But at least their sacrifice will not have been in 
vain. They have brought unity to their divided coun- 
try, they have made her become conscious of herself 
again, they have made her learn enthusiasm once again. 
They have not seen victory, but they have merited it. 
Honor to them, struck down first, and glory to those who 
will avenge them ! We enfold them both in our devo- 
tion to the same sacred cause. 

Would that a new era might dawn, thanks to them, 



RENfi DOUMIC 21 

that a new world might be born in which we might breathe 
more freely, where injustices centuries old might be 
made good, where France, arising from long humihation, 
might resume her rank and destiny ! Then, in that France, 
healed and revived, what an awakening, what a renewal, 
what a sap, what a magnificent flowering there would 
be ! This will be thy work, soldier of 1914 ! To you we 
shall owe this resurrection of our beloved country. And 
later on, and always, in everything beautiful and good 
that may be done among us, in the creations of our poets 
and the discoveries of our savants, in the thousand forms 
of national activity, in the strength of our young men 
and the grace of our young women, in all that will be 
the France of to-morrow, there will be, soldier so brave 
and so simple in your greatness, a little of your heroic 
soul! 



CERTAINTY OF VICTORY 
Rene Raphael Viviani 

Faithful to the signature which she attached to the 
treaty of September 4, 1914, and by which she engaged 
her honor, that is to say, her Hfe, France, in accord with 
her alhes, will not lay down her arms until she has avenged 
outraged right and regained forever the provinces which 
were torn from her by force, restored heroic Belgium to 
the fullness of her material prosperity and political inde- 
pendence, and broken Prussian militarism so that the 
Allies may eventually reconstruct a regenerated Europe 
founded upon justice and right. 

We are not inspired, gentlemen, in this plan of war 
and of peace by any presumptuous hope, for we have the 
certainty of success. We owe this certitude to our army 
of all ranks and to our sailors, who, joined to the British 
Navy, secure for us the control of the seas, and to the 

On December 22, 1914, Ren6 Viviani, then Premier of France, de- 
livered in the Chamber of Deputies an address of world-wide interest, 
a part of which is printed below. In this speech Viviani served notice 
on Germany and Austria that France was in the conflict until it became 
possible for France and her allies to dictate terms of peace. 

Viviani became Premier of France immediately after the outbreak 
of the war, but was succeeded by Aristide Briand in 1915. He has been 
called "Europe's foremost orator." 

Contrast these lofty sentiments with those expressed by the German 
editor Maximilian Harden, in the New Yorker Revue (1915). 

"We are waging war for ourselves alone. . . . We need land, free 
roads to the ocean, and for the spirit and language and wares and trade 
of Germany we need the same values that are accorded such goods any- 
where else." 

22 



RENfi RAPHAEL VIVIANI 23 

troops who have repulsed in Morocco incessant aggres- 
sions. 

We owe it also to the soldiers who defend our flag in 
those far-off French colonies, who from the very first 
outbreak of the war hastened back with their tender 
soHcitude for the mother country. 

We owe it to our army, whose heroism has been guided 
by incomparable leaders throughout the victory of the 
Marne, the victory of Flanders, and in many fights, and 
we owe it to the nation, which has equaled this heroism 
by a corresponding demonstration of silence and serenity 
during the critical hours through which the country has 
passed. Thus we have shown to the world that an organ- 
ized democracy can serve by its vigorous action the ideal 
of hberty and equality which constitute its greatness. 
Thus we have shown to the world, to use the words of 
our Commander in Chief, who is both a great soldier 
and a noble citizen, that "the repubhc may well be proud 
of the army that she has prepared." And thus this 
impious war has brought out all the virtues of our race, 
both those with which we were credited — of initiative, 
61an, bravery, and fearlessness — and those which we 
were not supposed to possess — endurance, patience, 
and stoicism. 

Let us do honor to all these heroes. Glory to those 
who have fallen before the victory, and to those also who 
through victory will avenge them to-morrow ! A nation 
which can arouse such enthusiasm can never perish. 



BELGIUM SHALL RISE 
Cardinal Mercier 

My dearest brethren, I desire to utter, in your name 
and my own, the gratitude of those whose age, vocation, 
and social conditions cause them to benefit by the heroism 
of others, without bearing in it any active part. 

If any man had rescued you from shipwreck or from 
fire, you would assuredly hold yourselves bound to him 
by a debt of everlasting thankfulness. But it is not one 
man, it is two hundred and fifty thousand men, who 
fought, who suffered, who fell for you, so that Belgium 
might keep her independence, her dynasty, her patriotic 
unity; so that after the vicissitudes of battle she might 
rise nobler, purer, more erect, and more glorious than 
before. 

In your name I sent them the greeting of our fraternal 
sympathy and our assurance that not only do we pray 
for the success of their arms and for the eternal welfare 
of their souls, but that we also accept for their sake all 
the distress, whether physical or moral, that falls to our 
own share in the oppression that hourly besets us, and all 
that the future may have in store for us, in humiliation 
for a time, in anxiety, and in sorrow. In the day of final 
victory we shall be in honor ; it is just that to-day we 
should all be in grief. 

Extract from the famous pastoral letter of Cardinal Mercier, Decem- 
ber 25, 1914. Since the first atrocities in Belgium Cardinal Mercier has 
stood forth, a tower of strength among his stricken fellow-countrymen, 
fearless, helpful, defiant, uncowed by vengeful threats, constantly giving 
aid by word and deed to his beloved land. 

24 



CARDINAL MERCIER 25 

Oh, all too easily do I understand how natural 
instinct rebels against the evils that have fallen upon 
Belgium ; the spontaneous thought of mankind is ever 
that virtue should have its instantaneous crown, and 
injustice its immediate* retribution. But the ways of 
God are not our ways. Providence gives free way, for 
a time measured by divine wisdom, to human passions 
and the conflict of desires. God, being eternal, is patient. 
The last word is the word of mercy, and it belongs to those 
who believe in love. 

Better than any other man, perhaps, do I know what 
our country has undergone. These four last months 
have seemed to me age-long. By thousands have our 
brave ones been mown down ; wives, mothers, are weep- 
ing for those they shall never see again ; hearths are 
desolate; dire poverty spreads; anguish increases. I 
have traversed the greater part of the districts most ter- 
ribly devastated in my diocese; and the ruins I beheld 
were more dreadful than I, prepared by the saddest of 
forebodings, could have imagined. Churches, schools, 
asylums, hospitals, convents, in great numbers, are in 
ruins. Entire villages have all but disappeared. 

In the dear city of Louvain, perpetually in my thoughts, 
the magnificent church of St. Peter will never recover 
its former splendor. The ancient college of St. Ives, 
the art schools, the consular and commercial schools of 
the University, the old markets, our rich library with its 
collections, its unique and unpublished manuscripts, its 
archives, its galleries — all this accumulation of intel- 
lectual, of historic, of artistic riches, the fruits of the labor 
of five centuries — all is in the dust. 

Many a parish has lost its pastor. In my diocese 
alone I know that thirteen priests were put to death. 
Thousands of Belgian citizens have been deported to 



26 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

the prisons of Germany. Hundreds of innocent men 
have been shot or burned. We can neither number our 
dead nor complete the measure of our ruins. 

And there where hves were not taken, and there where 
the stones of buildings were not thrown down, what 
anguish unrevealed ! Families, hitherto living at ease, 
now in bitter want ; all commerce at an end ; all careers 
ruined ; industry at a standstill ; thousands upon thou- 
sands of workingmen without employment; working- 
women, shop girls, humble servant girls, without the 
means of earning their bread ; and poor souls forlorn on 
the bed of sickness and fever, crying, "0 Lord, how long, 
how long?" There is nothing to reply. The reply 
remains the secret of God. 

Yes, dearest brethren, it is the secret of God. He is 
the master of events and the sovereign director of the 
human multitude. As for us, my brethren, we will 
adore Him in the integrity of our souls. Not yet do we 
see, in all its magnificence, the revelation of His wisdom, 
but our faith trusts Him with it all. Before His justice 
we are humble, and in His mercy hopeful. 

God will save Belgium, my brethren, you cannot 
doubt it. Nay, rather. He is saving her. Across the 
smoke of conflagration, across the stream of blood, have 
you not glimpses, do you not perceive, signs of His love 
for us? Is there a patriot among us who does not know 
that Belgium has grown great ? Nay, which of us would 
have the heart to cancel this last page in the national 
history? Which of us does not exult in the brightness of 
the glory of this shattered nation? When a mighty 
foreign power, confident in its own strength and defiant 
of the faith of treaties, dared to threaten us in our inde- 
pendence, then did all Belgians rise as one man. 

Belgium gave her word of honor to defend her inde- 



CARDINAL MERCIER 27 

pendence. She kept her word. The other Powers had 
agreed to protect and to respect Belgian neutrahty. 
Germany has broken her word ; England has been faith- 
ful to it. These are the facts. We should have acted 
unworthily had we evaded our obligation. And now we 
would not rescind our first resolution; we exult in it. 
Being called upon to write a most solemn page in the 
history of our country, we resolved that it should be also 
a sincere, also a glorious page. And as long as we are 
compelled to give proof of endurance, so long we shall 
endure. 

Truce then, my brethren, to all murmurs of complaint. 
Not only to the Redeemer's example shall you look but 
also to that of the thirty thousand, perhaps forty thou- 
sand, men who have already shed their hfe blood for their 
country. In comparison with them what have you en- 
dured who are deprived of the daily comforts of your 
lives ? Let the patriotism of our army, the heroism of our 
King and of our beloved Queen, serve to stimulate us 
and support us. Let us bemoan ourselves no more. Let 
us deserve the coming deliverance. Let us hasten it by 
our prayers. Courage, brethren. Suffering passes away ; 
the crown of life for our souls, the crown of glory for our 
nation, shall not pass. 



THERE MUST BE NO DELAY 

David Lloyd George 

This is an engineers' war, and it will be won or lost 
owing to the efforts or shortcomings of engineers. Unless 
we are able to equip our armies our predominance in men 
will avail us nothing. We need men, but we need arms 
more than men, and delay in producing them is full of 
peril for this country. You may say that I am saying 
things that ought to be kept from the enemy. I am not 
a believer in giving any information which is useful to 
him. You may depend on it he knows, but I do not 
believe in withholding from our own public information 
which they ought to possess, because unless you tell them 
you cannot invite their cooperation. The nation that 
cannot bear the truth is not fit for war, and may our 
young men be volunteers, while the unflinching pride of 
those they have left behind them in their deed of sacrifice 
ought to satisfy the most apprehensive that we are not a 
timid race, who cannot face unpleasant facts ! The last 
thing in the world John Bull wants is to be mollycoddled. 
The people must be told exactly what the position is, 

This warning against strikes was delivered to the British Nation at 
Bangor on February 28, 1915. 

The Right Honorable David Lloyd George was born in Manchester 
in 1863 and was educated at Llanystymdwy Church School and by a 
private tutor. He is the son of a Unitarian schoolmaster. From 1908- 
1915 he was Chancellor of the Exchequer. In 1915 he became Minister 
of Munitions and held this ofHce until December, 1916, when the Asquith 
Ministry was overthrown. Mr. Lloyd George then became Britain's 
Prime Minister. 

28 



DAVID LLOYD GEORGE 29 

and then we can ask them to help. We must appeal for 
the cooperation of employers, workmen, and the general 
public; the three must act and endure together, or we 
delay and maybe imperil victory. We ought to requisi- 
tion the aid of every man who can handle metal. It 
means that the needs of the community in many respects 
will suffer acutely vexatious, and perhaps injurious, delay ; 
but I feel sure that the public are prepared to put up with 
all this discomfort, loss, and privation if thereby their 
country marches triumphantly out of this great struggle. 
We have every reason for confidence ; we have none for 
complacency. Hope is the mainspring of eflficiency; 
complacency is its rust. 

We laugh at things in Germany that ought to terrify 
us. We say, "Look at the way they are making their 
bread — out of potatoes, ha, ha!" Aye, that potato- 
bread spirit is something which is more to dread than to 
mock at. I fear that more than I do even von Hinden- 
burg's strategy, efficient as it may be. That is the spirit 
in which a country should meet a great emergency, and 
instead of mocking at it we ought to emulate it. I be- 
lieve we are just as imbued with the spirit as Germany is, 
but we want it evoked. The average Briton is too shy 
to be a hero until he is asked. The British temper is one 
of never wasting heroism on needless display, but there 
is plenty of it for the need. There is nothing Britishers 
would not give up for the honor of their country or for 
the cause of freedom. Indulgences, comforts, even the 
necessities of Hfe they would willingly surrender. Why, 
there are two millions of them at this hour who have 
wilfingly tendered their lives for their country. What 
more could they do ? If the absorption of all our engineer- 
ing resources is demanded, no British citizen will grudge 
his share of inconvenience. 



30 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

But what about those more immediately concerned in 
that kind of work? Here I am approaching something 
which is very difficult to talk about — I mean the em- 
ployers and workmen. I must speak out quite plainly; 
nothing else is of the slightest use. For one reason or 
another we are not getting all the assistance we have the 
right to expect from our workers. Disputes, industrial 
disputes, are inevitable ; and when you have a good deal 
of stress and strain, men's nerves are not at their best. 
I think I can say I always preserve my temper in these 
days — I hope my wife won't give me away — and I have 
no doubt that the spirit of unrest creeps into the relations 
between employer and workmen. Some differences of 
opinion are quite inevitable, but we cannot afford them 
now ; and, above all, we cannot resort to the usual method 
of settling them. 

I suppose I have settled more labor disputes than any 
other man in this hall, and, although those who only know 
me slightly may be surprised to hear me say it, the thing 
that you need most is patience. If I were to give a motto 
to a man who is going to a conference between employers 
and workmen I would say: "Take your time; don't 
hurry. It will come around with patience and tact and 
temper." But you know we cannot afford those leisurely 
methods now. Time is victory, and while employers and 
workmen on the Clyde have been spending time in dis- 
puting over a fraction, and when a week-end, ten days, 
and a fortnight of work which is absolutely necessary 
for the defense of the country has been set aside, I say 
here solemnly that it is intolerable that the life of Britain 
should be imperiled for the matter of a farthing an hour. 

Who is to blame ? That is not the question, but — 
How is it to be stopped? Employers will say, "Are we 
always to give way?" Workmen say, "Employers are 



DAVID LLOYD GEORGE 31 

making their fortunes out of an emergency of the country ; 
why are not we to have a share of the plunder ? " (" Hear, 
hear !" and laughter.) There is one gentleman here who 
holds that view. (Laughter.) I hope he is not an en- 
gineer. (Renewed laughter.) "We work harder than 
ever," say the workmen. All I can say is, if they do they 
are entitled to their share. But that is not the point — 
Who is right? Who is wrong? They are both right 
and they are both wrong. The whole point is that these 
questions ought to be settled without throwing away the 
chances of humanity in its greatest struggle. There is a 
good deal to be said against compulsory arbitration, but 
during the war the Government ought to have power to 
settle all these differences, and the work should go on. 
The workman ought to get more. Very well, let the 
Government find it out and give it to him. If he ought 
not, then he ought not to throw up his tools. The coun- 
try cannot afford it. It is disaster, and I believe that 
the moment this comes home to workmen and employers 
they will comply with the urgent demand of the Govern- 
ment. There must be no delay. 



• 



ALLIES' CONDITIONS OF PEACE 
Sir Edward Grey 

What is the issue for which we are fighting? In due 
time the terms of peace will be put forward by our Allies 
in concert with us — in accordance with the alliance that 
exists between us — and published to the world. One 
essential condition must be the restoration to Belgium of 
her independence, national life, and free possession of her 
territory, and reparation to her as far as reparation is 
possible for the cruel wrong done to her. That is part of 
the great issue for which we, with our Allies, are contend- 
ing, and the great part of the issue is this — we wish the 
nations of Europe to be free to live their independent lives, 
working out their own form of government for them- 
selves, and their own national developments, whether 
they be great nations or small States, in full liberty. 
This is our ideal. The German ideal — we have had it 
poured out by German professors and publicists since the 
war began — is that of the Germans as a superior people, 
to whom all things are lawful in the securing of their own 

On the 22d day of March, 1915, Sir Edward Grey gave to the world 
the conditions upon which the Allied governments would accept peace. 
Below is an extract from that address. 

The Right Honorable Sir Edward Grey was Britain's Secretary of 
State for Foreign Affairs from 1905 to 1917, when he was superseded by 
the Right Honorable Arthur James Balfour. Grey was born April 25, 
1862, and received his education at Balliol College, Oxford. Many 
nicknames have been given him, the best known of which is " England's 
Evil Genius." 

32 



SIR EDWARD GREY 33 

power, against whom resistance of any sort is unlawful — 
a people establishing a domination over the nations of 
the Continent, imposing a peace which is not to be liberty 
for every nation, but subservience to Germany. I would 
leave the Continent altogether or even perish rather than 
live on it under such conditions. 

After this war we and the other nations of Europe must 
be free to Hve, not menaced continually by talk of " su- 
preme war lords," and "shining armor," and the sword 
continually "rattled in the scabbard," and heaven con- 
tinually invoked as the accomplice of Germany, free to 
hve without having our policy dictated and our national 
destinies and activities controlled by the military caste of 
Prussia. We claim for ourselves and our allies claim for 
themselves, and together we will secure for Europe, the 
right of independent sovereignty for the different nations, 
the right to pursue a national existence, not in the shadow 
of Prussian hegemony and supremacy, but in the light of 
equal liberty. 

All honor for ever be given from us whom age and cir- 
cumstances have kept at home to those who have volun- 
tarily come forward to hazard every risk, to give their 
lives in battle on land and on sea. They have their 
reward in enduring fame and honor. And all honor be 
from us to the brave armies and navies of our Allies, 
who have exhibited such splendid courage and noble 
patriotism. The admiration they have aroused, and their 
comradeship in arms, will be an ennobling and enduring 
memory between us, cementing friendships and per- 
petuating national good will. For all of us who are serv- 
ing the State at home, in whatever capacity, whether 
officials, or employers, or wage earners, doing our utmost 
to carry on the national life in this time of stress, there is 
the knowledge that there can be no nobler opportunity 



34 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

than that of serving one's country when its existence is 
at stake, and when the cause is just and right ; and never 
was there a time in our national history when the crisis 
was so great and so imperative, or the cause more just 
and right. 



AMERICA FOR HUMANITY 

WooDROw Wilson 

Mr. Mayor, Mr. Secretary, Admiral Fletcher, and 
Gentlemen of the Fleet : This is not an occasion upon 
which it seems to me that it would be wise for me to 
make many remarks, but I would deprive myself of a 
great gratification if I did not express my pleasure in 
being here, my gratitude for the splendid reception which 
has been accorded me as the representative of the nation, 
and my profound interest in the navy of the United States. 
That is an interest with which I was apparently born, for 
it began when I was a youngster and has ripened with my 
knowledge of the affairs and policies of the United States. 

I think it is a natural, instinctive judgment of the people 
of the United States that they express their power appro- 
priately in an efficient navy, and this is true partly, 
I believe, because that navy somehow is expected to 
express their character, not within our own borders, where 
that character is understood, but outside our borders, 
where it is hoped we may occasionally touch others with 
some sUght vision of what America stands for. 

I like to image in my thought this ideal. These quiet 
ships lying in the river have no suggestion of bluster about 
them — no intimation of aggression. They are com- 
manded by men thoughtful of the duty of citizens as well 

President Wilson addressed the Mayor's Committee in New York, 
May 17, 1915, on the occasion of the Naval Review and Parade on the 
Hudson. 

35 



36 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

as the duty of officers — men acquainted with the tradi- 
tions of the great service to which they belong — men 
who know by touch with the people of the United States 
what sort of purposes they ought to entertain and what 
sort of discretion they ought to exercise, in order to use 
those engines of force as engines to promote the interests 
of humanity. 

The mission of America is the only thing that a sailor 
or soldier should think about : he has nothing to do with 
the formulation of her policy ; he is to support her policy, 
whatever it is — but he is to support her policy in the 
spirit of herself, and the strength of our policy is that we, 
who for the time being administer the affairs of this nation, 
do not originate her spirit; we attempt to embody it; 
we attempt to realize it in action ; we are dominated by 
it, we do not dictate it. 

And so with every man in arms who serves the nation — 
he stands and waits to do the thing which the nation de- 
sires. America sometimes seems perhaps to forget her 
programs, or, rather, I would say that sometimes those 
who represent her seem to forget her programs, but the 
people never forget them. It is as startling as it is touch- 
ing to see how whenever you touch a principle you touch 
the hearts of the people of the United States. They 
listen to your debates of policy, they determine which 
party they will prefer to power, they choose and prefer 
as ordinary men ; but their real affection, their real 
force, their real irresistible momentum, is for the ideas, 
which men embody. 

And so this sight in the river touches me merely as a 
symbol of that, and it quickens the pulse of every man 
who realizes these things to have anything to do with 
them. When a crisis occurs in this country, gentlemen, 
it is as if you put your hand on the pulse of a dynamo, 



WOODROW WILSON 37 

it is as if the things which you were in connection with 
were spiritually bred. You had nothing to do with them 
except, if you listen truly, to speak the things that you 
hear. These things now brood over the river, this spirit 
now moves with the men who represent the nation in the 
navy, these things will move upon the waters in the 
maneuvers; no threat lifted against any man, against 
any nation, against any interest, but just a great, solemn 
evidence that the force of America is the force of moral 
principle, that there is not anything else that she loves 
and that there is not anything else for which she will 
contend. 



ADDRESS TO THE FIGHTERS OF FRANCE 
Anatole France 

One hundred and twenty-six years ago to-day the people 
of Paris, armed with pikes and guns, to the beating of 
drums and the ringing of the tocsin, pressed in a long line 
down the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, attacked the Bastile, 
and, after five hours' conflict beneath deadly fire, took 
possession of the hated fortress. A symbolical victory 
won over tyranny and despotism, a victory by which the 
French people inaugurated a new regime. 

The sovereignty of law ! Therein lies the significance 
of the Bastile taken by the people and razed to its founda- 
tions. The coming of justice ! For that reason patriots 
wearing the tricolor cockade in their hats, and citizenesses 
in frocks striped with the nation's colors, danced all 
night long to the accompaniment of violins, in the gay 
brilliance of the illuminations, on the leveled site of the 
Bastile. 

Hour of confidence in human goodness, of faith in a 
future of concord and of peace ! Then did France reveal 
her true place among men ; then did she show with what 
hopes the Revolution swelled the hearts of Europe. The 
fall of the Bastile resounded throughout the whole world. 

This is an extract from an article which first appeared in the Petit 
Parisien, celebrating the festival of the 14th of July, 1915. It has been 
translated by Winifred Stevens, editor of "The Book of France." 

This Man of Letters, Jacques Anatole Thibault France, was born 
in Paris, April 16, 1844. Besides being an author of international repute 
and a member of the French Academy, Monsieur France is an oflScer in 
the Legion of Honor. 

38 



ANATOLE FRANCE 39 

To Russia the good tidings came like the bright flame 
of a bonfire on some day of pubHc rejoicing. In the proud 
city of Peter and of Catherine nobles and serfs, with tears 
and cries of gladness, embraced one another on the public 
squares. The French Ambassador at the Court of the 
Empress bears witness to this rapture. " It is impossible," 
he writes, "to describe the enthusiasm excited among 
tradesmen, merchants, citizens, and the young men of 
the upper classes by this fall of a State prison, and this 
first triumph of tempestuous liberty — French, Russians, 
Danes, Germans, Dutchmen were all congratulating and 
embracing one another in the streets as if they had been 
liberated from some onerous bondage." 

In England workingmen, the middle classes, and the 
generous minded among the aristocracy all rejoiced over 
the victory of right won by the people of Paris. Neither 
did their enthusiasm flag, despite all the efforts of a Gov- 
ernment strenuously hostile to the new principles of 
France. In 1790, the anniversary of the taking of the 
Bastile was celebrated in London by an immense banquet, 
presided over by Lord Stanhope, one of the wisest states- 
men of the United Kingdom. 

These are the memories we recall and the events we 
celebrate to-day. 

Dear soldiers, dear fellow-citizens, I address you on this 
grave festival because I love you and honor you and 
think of you unceasingly. 

I am entitled to speak to you heart to heart because I 
have a right to speak for France, being one of those who 
have ever sought, in freedom of judgment and uprightness 
of conscience, the best means of making their country 
strong. I am entitled to speak to you because, not hav- 
ing desired war, but being compelled to suffer it, I, like 
you, like all Frenchmen, am resolved to wage it till the 



40 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

end, until justice shall have conquered iniquity, civiliza- 
tion barbarism, and until the nations are delivered from 
the monstrous menace of an oppressive militarism. I have 
a right to speak to you because I am one of the few who 
have never deceived you, and who have never believed 
that you needed lies for the maintenance of your courage ; 
one of the few who, rejecting as unworthy of you decep- 
tive fictions and misleading silence, have told you the 
truth. 

I told you in December last year: "This war will be 
cruel and long." I tell you now : "You have done much, 
but all is not over. The end of your labors approaches, 
but is not yet. You are fighting against an enemy 
fortified by long preparation and immense material. 
Your foe is unscrupulous. He has learned from his leaders 
that inhumanity is the soldier's first virtue. Arming 
himself in a manner undreamed of hitherto by the most 
formidable of conquerors, he causes rivers of blood to 
flow and breathes forth vapors charged with torpor and 
with death. Endure, persevere, dare. Remain what 
you are, and none shall prevail against you. 

You are fighting for your native land, that laughing, 
fertile land, the most beautiful in the world ; for your 
fields and your meadows. For the august mother, who, 
crowned with vine leaves and with ears of corn, waits to 
welcome you and to feed you with all the inexhaustible 
treasures of her breast. You are fighting for your village 
belfry, your roofs of slate or tile, with wreaths of smoke 
curling up into the serene sky. For your fathers' graves, 
your children's cradles. 

You are fighting for our august cities, on the banks of 
whose rivers rise the monuments of generations — roman- 
esque churches, cathedrals, minsters, abbeys, palaces, 
triumphal arches, columns of bronze, theaters, museums, 



ANATOLE FRANCE 41 

town halls, hospitals, statues of sages and of heroes — 
monuments whose walls, whether modest or magnificent, 
shelter alike commerce, industry, science, and the arts, all 
that constitutes the beauty of life. 

You are fighting for our moral heritage, our manners, 
our uses, our laws, our customs, our beliefs, our traditions. 
For the works of our sculptors, our architects, our painters, 
our engravers, our goldsmiths, our enamelers, our glass 
cutters, our weavers. For the songs of our musicians. 
For our mother tongue which, with ineffable sweetness, 
for eight centuries has flowed from the lips of our poets, 
our orators, our historians, our philosophers. For the 
knowledge of man and of nature. For that encyclopedic 
learning which attained among us the high-water mark of 
precision and lucidity. You are fighting for the genius 
of France, which enlightened the world and gave freedom 
to the nations. By this noble spirit bastiles are over- 
thrown. And, lastly, you are fighting for the homes of 
Belgians, English, Russians, Italians, Serbians, not for 
France merely, but for Europe, ceaselessly disturbed and 
furiously threatened by Germany's devouring ambition. 

The Fatherland ! Liberty ! Beloved children of France, 
these are the sacred treasures committed to your keep- 
ing ; for their sakes you endure ; for their sakes you will 
conquer. 



EVIVA L' ITALIA 
William Archer 

One of the most beautiful and memorable of human 
experiences is to start, some fine morning, from a point 
in German Switzerland or Tyrol and, in two or three 
days — or it may be in one swinging stretch — to tramp 
over an Alpine pass and down into the Promised Land 
below. It is of no use to rush it in a motor ; you might 
as well hop over by aeroplane. In order to savor the ex- 
perience to the full, you must take staff and scrip, like the 
Ritter Tannhauser, and go the pilgrim's way. It is a 
joy even to pass from the guttural and explosive place 
names of Teutonia to the liquid music of the southern 
vocables — from Brieg to Domo d' Ossola, from Goschenen 
to Bellinzona, from St. Moritz to Chiavenna, from Botzen 
and Brixen to Ala and Verona. It is a still greater joy 
to exchange the harsh, staring colors of the north for the 
soft luminosity of the south, as you zigzag down from the 
bare snows to the pines, from the pines to the chestnuts, 
from the chestnuts to the trellised vineyards. And just 
about where the vineyards begin, you come upon two 

William Archer, journalist and editor, was born in Perth, Scotland, 
on the 23d day of September, 1856. He received his education at Edin- 
burgh University. He is widely known as a dramatic critic and has 
served on several of the leading European journals. 

Mr. Archer's article, which appears below, was first published in the 
London Daily News, July, 1915. 

42 



WILLIAM ARCHER 43 

wayside posts, one of them inscribed "Schweiz" or 
"Oesterreich," the other bearing the magic word "ItaHa." 
If your heart does not leap at the sight of it you may as 
well about-turn and get you home again; for you have 
no sense of history, no love of art, no hunger for divine, 
inexhaustible beauty. For all these things are implicit 
in the one word, "Italy." 

Alas ! the charm of this excursion has from of old made 
irresistible appeal to the northern barbarian. That has 
been Italy's historic misfortune. For certain centuries, 
under the dominance of Rome, she kept the Goths and 
Huns and Vandals aloof by what is called in India a "for- 
ward policy" — by throwing the outworks of civilization 
far beyond the Alpine barrier. But Rome fell to decay, 
and, wave upon wave, the barbarian — generally the 
Teuton, under one alias or another — surged over her 
glorious highlands, her bounteous lowlands, and her 
marvelous cities. It is barely half a century since the 
hated Tedeschi were expelled from the greater part of their 
Cisalpine possessions ; and now, in the fullness of time, 
Italy has resolved to redeem the last of her ravished 
provinces and to make her boundaries practically conter- 
minous with Italian speech and race. 

The political and military aspects of the situation have 
been fully dealt with elsewhere ; but a lifelong lover of 
Italy may perhaps be permitted to state his personal 
view of her action. While the negotiations lasted, her 
position was scarcely a dignified one. It seemed to be a 
question not, indeed, of selling her birthright for a mess of 
pottage, but of buying her birthright at the cost of complic- 
ity in monstrous crime. Neither Italy nor Europe would 
have profited in the long run by the substitution of 
"Belgia Irredenta" for "Italia Irredenta." But now 
that she has repudiated the sops offered to her honor and 



44 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

conscience, her position is clear and fine. She has re- 
jected concessions larger, probably, than any great power 
has ever before been prepared to make without stroke of 
sword ; and she has thrown in her lot with the Allies in no 
time-serving spirit, but at a point when their fortunes 
were by no means at their highest. This is a gesture 
entirely worthy of a great and high-spirited people. 

It is true that she had no guarantee for the promised 
concessions except the "Teutonica fides," which has be- 
come a byword and a reproach. But I am much mistaken 
if that was the sole or main motive that determined her 
resort to arms. She took a larger view. She felt that 
even if Germany, by miracle, kept her faith, the world, 
after a German victory, would be no place for free men to 
live in. She was not moved by the care for a few square 
miles of territory, more or less, but by a strong sense of 
democratic solidarity and of human dignity. After the 
events of the past ten months, she felt that, to a self- 
respecting man or nation, German hate was infinitely 
preferable to German love. It was, in fact, a patent of 
nobility. 

And now that Italy is ranked with us against the powers 
of evil, it becomes more than ever our duty to strain every 
nerve for their defeat. We are now taking our share in 
the guardianship of the world's great treasure house of 
historic memories and of the creations of genius. We 
have become, as it were, co-trustees of an incomparable, 
irreplaceable heritage of beauty. Italy has been the 
scene of many and terrible wars ; but since she emerged 
from the Dark Ages I do not know that war has greatly 
damaged the glory of her cities. She has not, of recent 
centuries, had to mourn a Louvain or a Rheims. But 
if the Teuton, in his present temper, should gain any 
considerable footing within her bounds, the Dark Ages 



WILLIAM ARCHER 45 

would be upon her once more. What effort can be too 
great to avert such a calamity ! 

I am not by way of being versed in the secrets of Courts ; 
but I recall to-day, with encouragement, a conversation I 
had some years ago with an ex-Ambassador to Italy (not 
a British Ambassador) who had been on intimate terms 
with the King, and spoke with enthusiasm of his Majesty's 
character. He told me of his bravery, his devotion to 
duty, his simple manners, his high intelligence. One 
little anecdote I may repeat without indiscretion. A 
Minister of Education said to my friend that when he had 
an interview with the King he felt like a schoolboy bring- 
ing up to an exacting though kindly master a half-pre- 
pared lesson ; and when this was repeated to his Majesty, 
he smiled and said : "Ministers come and go, but I, you 
see, am always here." He merited far better than his 
grandfather (said my informant) the title of "il Re Galan- 
tuomo." Under such a Chief of State Italy may, with 
high hope and courage, set about her task of tearing away 
her unredeemed fringes from that patchwork of tyrannies 
known as the Austrian Empire. 



RUSSIA'S HEART 
Michael Rodzianko 

To-day ends the first year of a most sanguinary war, 
replete with arduous sacrifices. The bloody conflict of 
the nations has not yet ceased and nobody can yet know 
when it will cease. This war is unprecedented in diffi- 
culties and sacrifices, but the greater the danger the 
greater grows our determination to carry it to the only 
possible conclusion — our decisive victory over the foe. 
For the solution of this problem there is now demanded 
from the entire country the utmost exertion of strength 
and complete unity. 

In these days of unrest and danger our great Emperor, 
meeting this entire national need halfway, and wishing to 
listen to the voice of the Russian land, has commanded 
the Imperial Duma to be convened, with firm faith in the 
inexhaustible strength of Russia. His Majesty expects 
from Government and public institutions, from Russian 
industry, and from all the loyal sons of our native land, 
without distinction of views and position, united, har- 
monious labor for the needs of our valiant army. On 
this sole all-national problem, as written in the Imperial 
Rescript, must hereafter be concentrated all the thought 
of a Russia united and invincible in its unity. In the 
complete and clear understanding of the profound mean- 
ing of this great imperial summons, the Imperial Duma 
embarks upon its responsible labors. 

At the time that this address was delivered, Michael Rodzianko 
was President of the Imperial Duma. M. Rodzianko is still President 
of this body, having retained his high office after the Revolution in 
March, 1917, because of the universal trust in his ability. On the date 
of the opening of the Duma, August 1, 1915, he delivered this address. 

46 



MICHAEL RODZIANKO 47 

The war through which we are passing is no longer a 
duel of armies, but imperatively calls for the participation 
therein of all our people. And in their common endeavor 
and harmonious, united labor lies the pledge of the suc- 
cess of our troops over the insolent foe. Holy Russia 
has lived all this year with a single desire — the desire 
for a living and indissoluble tie with the army, and from 
this desire the army has drawn fiery inspiration. Our 
public efforts for the past year, intense but restricted 
within certain bounds, were favored with notable apprecia- 
tion from the summit of the throne, and if these labors 
have actually lightened our army's difficult task of con- 
flict with a cruel antagonist, then it must be said here 
with pride and a feeling of profound satisfaction that for 
this difficult and responsible time the public forces of 
Russia have inscribed a splendid page in the history of their 
national existence. But these efforts and labors, inspired 
with love for native land, are still far from sufficient. 

The needs of the war are constantly growing, and 
from the summit of the throne has resounded afresh the 
summons to increased labors and new sacrifices. Our 
duty, sparing neither strength nor time nor means, is to 
set to work without delay. Let each one give his labor 
into the treasury of popular might. Let those who are 
rich, let those who are able, contribute to the welfare of 
the whole country. Both the army and the navy are 
setting us all an example of dauntless fulfillment of duty ; 
they have accomplished all that was in human power; 
our turn has now arrived and the now united public 
strength, working ceaselessly, I am sure can supply the 
army with all that is necessary for its further martial 
exploits. For the success of these responsible public 
labors, in addition to the benevolent attitude of indi- 
viduals placed at the head of departments, a change in 



48 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

the spirit itself and in the administration of the existing 
system is necessary. I firmly believe, gentlemen of the 
Imperial Duma, that at the present arduous time the 
reconstituted Government will not hesitate to place at 
the basis of its activity a trustful and responsive attitude 
toward the demands of public forces, summoning them 
thereby to common harmonious labor for the glorj'' and 
happiness of Russia. 

Gentlemen of the Imperial Duma ! Such are the great 
tasks which have risen up before us in their full stature. 
Do not forget that upon the issue of our labors for the 
assistance of the army depends the greatness of inde- 
pendent, free, and resuscitated Russia, while in the 
event of their failure, both grief and humiliation may 
threaten her. But no, our great Mother Russia will 
never be the slave of anybody ! Russia will fight till the 
last, till the complete downfall of the contemptible foe. 
The foe will be defeated, and until then there cannot be 
peace. Gentlemen, national representatives, at this great 
and terrible hour of trial we here must display the mighty 
national spirit in all its greatness. The country is await- 
ing a reply from you. Away with unnecessary doubts ! 
We must fight to the end and to the last soldier capable 
of bearing arms. We must be strong in profound faith 
in the mighty Russian warrior. 

We trust in thee. Holy Russia, in thy inexhaustible 
spiritual resources ; and let this encouraging voice of the 
entire Russian soil penetrate thither into the glorious 
Russian army and into the midst of the gallant fleet, 
and let our glorious defenders, the army and navy, know 
that united Russia, burning with a single wish and a 
single thought, will oppose to the hostile attack the steel 
breasts of her sons. 



THE WAR AND THE JEWS 

Israel Zangwill 

"You are the only people," said Agrippa, trying to 
hold back the Jews of Palestine from rising against the 
Roman Empire, "who think it a disgrace to be servants 
of those to whom all the world hath submitted." To- 
day, servants of all who have harbored them, the Jews 
are spending themselves passionately in the service of 
all. At the outbreak of the war an excited Englishwoman, 
hearing that the Cologne Gazette, said to be run by Jews, 
was abusing England, wrote to me, foaming at the quill, 
demanding that the Jews stop the paper. That the Jews 
as a nation do not exist, or that an English Jew could 
not interfere with the patriotic journalism of a Ger- 
man subject, nay, that the abuse in the Cologne Gazette 
was actually a proof of Jewish loyalty, did not occur to 
the worthy lady. Yet the briefest examination of the 
facts would have shown her that the Jews merely reflect 
their environment, if with a stronger tinge of color due 
to their more vivid temperament, their gratitude and 
attachment to their havens and fatherlands, and their 

Israel Zangwill was born in London in 1864. He may be termed 
self-educated, for he received only a superficial and entirely elementary 
education in the schools of London. He became famous as the author 
of "Merely Mary Ann," "Ghetto Tragedies," and "The Melting Pot." 
He is President of the International Jewish Territorial Organization and 
Vice President of the Men's League for Woman Suffrage. 

Zangwill's "War and the Jews" appeared in the Metropolitan for 
August, 1915. It is here reprinted by permission of the Metropolitan 
Magazine. 

49 



50 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

anxiety to prove themselves more patriotic than the 
patriots. It is but rarely that a Jew makes the faintest 
criticism of his country in war-fever, and when he does 
so, he is disavowed by his community and its press. For 
the Jew his country can do no wrong. Wherever we turn, 
therefore, we find the Jew prominently patriotic. In 
England the late Lord Rothschild presided over the Red 
Cross Fund, and the Lord Chief Justice is understood 
to have saved the financial situation not only for Eng- 
land, but for all her allies. In Germany, Herr Ballin, 
the Jew who refused the baptismal path to preferment, 
the creator of the mercantile marine, and now the organ- 
izer of the national food supply, stands as the Kaiser's 
friend, interpreter, and henchman, while Maximilian 
Harden brazenly voices the gospel of Prussianism, and 
Ernst Lissauer — a Jew converted to the religion of Love 
— sings "The Song of Hate." In France, Dreyfus — a 
more Christian Jew, albeit unbaptized — has charge of 
a battery to the north of Paris, while General Heymann, 
Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor, commands an army 
corps. In Turkey, the racially Jewish Enver Bey is 
the ruling spirit, having defeated the Jewish Djavid 
Bey, who was for alliance with France, while Italy, on 
the contrary, has joined the Allies, through the influence 
of Baron Sonnino, the son of a Jew. The military hos- 
pitals of Turkey are all under the direction of the Austrian 
Jew, Hecker. In Hungary it is the Jews who, with the 
Magyars, are the brains of the nation. Belgium has sent 
several thousand Jews to the colors and at a moment when 
Belgium's fate hangs upon England, has intrusted her 
interests at the Court of St. James's to a Jewish Min- 
ister, Mr. Hymans. Twenty thousand Jews are fighting 
for the British Empire, fifty thousand for the German, 
a hundred and seventy thousand for the Austro-Hun- 



ISRAEL ZANGWILL 51 

garian, and three hundred and fifty thousand for the 
Russian. Two thousand five hundred Jews fight for 
Serbia. Even from Morocco and Tripoh come Jewish 
troops — they number 20 per cent of the Zouaves. Nor 
are the British Colonies behind the French. From 
Austraha, New Zealand, from Canada, South Africa, 
from every possession and dependency, stream Jewish 
soldiers or sailors. Even the little contingent from 
Rhodesia had Jews, and the first British soldier to fall 
in German Southwest Africa was Ben Rabinson, a famous 
athlete. 

When Joseph Chamberlain offered the Zionists a plateau 
in East Africa the half-dozen local Britons held a "mass- 
meeting" of protest. Yet to-day, though the offer was 
rejected by the Zionists, fifty Jewish volunteers — among 
them Captain Blumenthal of the Artillery and Lieutenant 
Eckstein of the Mounted Rifles — are serving in the 
Defense Force enlisted at Nairobi. Letters from British 
Jews published in a single number of the Jewish World, 
taken at random, reveal the writers as with the Austra- 
lian fighting force in Egypt, with the Japanese at the tak- 
ing of Tsing-Tao, with the Grand Fleet in the North Sea, 
while the killed and wounded in the same issue range 
over almost every British regiment, from the historic 
Black Watch, Grenadier Guards, or King's Own Scotch 
Borderers down to the latest Middlesex and Manchester 
creations. The Old World and the New are indeed at 
clash when a Jewish sailor on Passover eve, in lieu of 
sitting pillowed at the immemorial ritual meal, is at his 
big gun, "my eye fixed to the telescopic lights and an 
ear in very close proximity to an adjacent navyphone, 
and the remainder of the time with my head on a pro- 
jectile for a pillow." Anglo-Jewry, once the home of 
timorous mothers and Philistine fathers, has become a 



52 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

Maccabean stronghold. One distinguished family alone 
— the Spielmanns — boast thirty-five members with 
the forces. A letter of thanks from the King has pub- 
lished the fact that an obscure Jew in a London suburb 
has five sons at the front. 

And in all these armies the old Maccabean valor which 
had not feared to challenge the Roman Empire at its 
mightiest, and to subdue which a favorite General had 
to be detached from the less formidable Britain, has been 
proved afresh. ''The Jewish bravery astonished us all," 
said the Vice Governor of Kovno, and, indeed, the hero- 
ism of the Russian Jew has become a household word. 
More than 300 privates — they cannot be officers — have 
been accorded the Order of St. George. One Jew, who 
brought down a German aeroplane, was awarded all four 
degrees of the order at once. In England Lieutenant de 
Pass won the Victoria Cross for carrying a wounded man 
out of heavy fire, and perished a few hours later in try- 
ing to capture a German sap. In Austria up to the end 
of the year the Jews had won 651 medals, crosses, etc. 
"I give my life for the victory of France and the peace 
of the world," wrote a young immigrant Jew who died 
on the battlefield. A collection of letters from German 
soldiers, published by the Jewish Book-shop of Berlin, 
reveals equal devotion to Germany. And to the ques- 
tion, "What shall it profit the Jew to fight for the whole 
world?" a Yiddish journalist, Morris Meyer, has found a 
noble answer. There is a unity behind all this seeming 
self-contradiction, he points out. "All these Jews are 
dying for the same thing — for the honor of the Jewish 
name." 



AMERICA'S PART 

Sir Gilbert Parker 

What has been the part played by the United States 
in this year of war? From the British standpoint, has 
she helped or retarded us? 

The account which we render of ourselves brings no 
blush to our cheeks, though we differ and criticize and 
gibe and challenge each other, as Britishers have always 
done; as Americans did in the time of their Civil War, 
when Lincoln's heart was almost broken by opposition 
from his political foes, and by savage criticism of his 
friends. At this time we are all in a state not perfectly 
normal. 

We are living, as it were, at the top of our being, and 
we are inclined to exaggerate, to be extravagant in de- 
nunciation or in criticism when things do not go as we 
think they ought to do, but go as they always do in war, 
with staggering ups and downs. 

There are those among us who have thought that the 
United States, as a vast democracy inspired by high 
national ideals, and as the enemy of all reactionary and 
tyrannical elements, might have done more to help us 
in our fight for civilization, might indeed have entered 
the war with us. 

Sir Gilbert Parker is a Canadian by birth, who has achieved fame as 
a novelist and man of letters. He has been most active in the spread of 
British and allied propaganda in the United States. This is an extract 
from an article which appeared in the New York Times on the first anni- 
versary of the declaration of war. It is called "A Reply" and is aimed 
at the critics of England's policy during the first year of the great war. 

53 



54 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

But let me say — and in this I believe I speak for the 
great majority of British people — that we have not had 
the least desire to invoke the armed assistance of the 
United States, or to influence her in the shghtest in this 
matter. 

The United States has performed immense service 
to the Allies by resisting all attempts to wean or force 
her from her neutrality by prohibiting the export of mu- 
nitions of war. Her perfect propriety and adherence to the 
spirit of true neutrality have resisted German pressure. 

Secondly, the services she has performed to civihzation 
by organizing relief for Belgium have been a service to 
humanity, and therefore a service to the Allies, who are 
fighting to restore to Belgium her usurped dominion. 

Thirdly, the United States has rendered immense 
services to this country by caring for the interests of 
British subjects abroad, and above all, by making the 
lot of British prisoners of war easier. Some of the worst 
cruelties and inhuman oppressions have been removed 
by her intervention. 

Lastly, her sympathy, expressed in a thousand ways, 
and not the least by fair consideration of the action taken 
by Great Britain in the blockade and other matters, has 
eased the minds of millions of King George's subjects. 
Lack of sympathy might easily have misinterpreted the 
acts of our Government. 

I wish Americans would believe that in this country 
there has been since this war began a larger and truer 
understanding of the American people. For my own 
part I have known the United States intimately for many 
years, and I have always had faith in her national pur- 
poses and confidence in her diplomatic integrity, and, 
from reading her history, a realization of her sense of 
justice. 



SIR GILBERT PARKER 55 

And in this war of ideals, fundamentally different, I 
believe the people of both Britain and America have come 
to a sense of kinship and of mutual admiration, not dimin- 
ished by the possible mistakes which may have been made 
by Great Britain largely due to improvised organization, 
or in the United States by her rigid neutrality, which 
may not have seemed to chime with her sympathy. 

American diplomacy has been unimpeachable, and 
we in Great Britain are grateful for an understanding 
which is as material a support as an army in the field. 



PLEA FOR PEACE 

Pope Benedict 

To-day, on the sad anniversary of the terrible conflict, 
our heart gives forth the wish that the war will soon end. 
We raise again our voice to utter a fatherly cry for peace. 
May this cry, dominating the frightful noise of arms, 
reach the warring peoples and their chiefs and induce 
kindly and more serene intentions. 

In the name of the Lord God, in the name of the Father 
and Lord in heaven, in the name of the blessed blood of 
Jesus — the price of the redemption of humanity — we 
implore the belligerent nations, before Divine Provi- 
dence, henceforth to end the horrible carnage which for a 
year has been dishonoring Europe. 

This is the blood of brothers that is being shed on land 
and sea. The most beautiful regions of Europe — this 
garden of the world — are sown with bodies and ruins. 
There, where recently fields and factories thrived, cannon 
now roar in a frightful manner, in a frenzy of demolition, 
sparing neither cities nor villages, and spreading the 
ravages of death. 

You who before God and men are charged with the 
grave responsibility of peace and war, listen to our prayer, 
listen to the fatherly voice of the vicar of the eternal and 
supreme Judge to whom you should give account of your 
public works as well as private actions. 

The abundant riches which the creating God has given 

Pope Benedict XV sent out this appeal from the Vatican on the first 
anniversary of the great war. 

56 



POPE BENEDICT 57 

to your lands permit you to continue the contest. But 
at what a price ! At the price of thousands of young 
lives lost each day on the battlefields, and of the ruins 
of so many cities and villages, so many monuments, 
erected through the piety and genius of our forefathers. 

The bitter tears which flow in the sanctity of homes 
and at the foot of altars, do they not also repeat that the 
price of the continuation of the contest is great, too 
great ? 

And it cannot be said that the immense conflict can- 
not be ended without violence of arms. May this craze 
for destruction be abandoned; nations do not perish. 
Humiliated and oppressed, they tremblingly carry the 
yoke imposed on them and prepare their revenge, trans- 
mitting from generation to generation a sorrowful herit- 
age of hate and vengeance. 

Why not now weigh with serene conscience the rights 
and just aspiration of the peoples? Why not start with 
good will a direct or indirect exchange of views with the 
object of considering as far as possible these rights and 
aspirations, and thus put to an end the terrible combat, as 
has been the case previously under similar circumstances ? 

Blessed be he who first extends the olive branch and 
tenders his hand to the enemy in offering his reasonable 
condition of peace. 

The equilibrium of world progress and the security 
and tranquillity of nations repose on mutual well-being 
and respect of the right and dignity of others more than 
on the number of armies and a formidable zone of fortresses. 

It is the cry of peace which issues from our supreme 
soul this sad day and which invites the true friends of 
peace in the world to extend their hands to hasten the 
end of a war which for a year has transformed Europe 
into an enormous battlefield. 



58 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

Let us hope for the reconciliation of the States; may 
the people once again become brothers and return to 
their peaceful labor in arts, learning, and industry ; may 
once again the empire of justice be established ; may the 
people decide henceforth to confine the solution of their 
differences no longer to the sword, but to courts of jus- 
tice and equity, where the questions may be studied with 
necessary calm and thought. 

This will be the most beautiful and glorious victory. 



A STRUGGLE BETWEEN TWO WORLDS 

Take Jonescu 

In all our long history there has never been a time of 
greater gravity, or one richer in possibilities, or one more 
overwhelming for us by its very grandeur, than the time 
through which the world is now passing; and naturally 
it affects us too, affects us more closely indeed than it 
affects others. 

Shall we inquire, gentlemen, what is the meaning of 
that which is happening around us? Is this merely a 
war like all other wars? Is it just one of those number- 
less historical incidents which at first sight seem to be 
important, but, as one realizes later, were of no more 
than passing interest? Or are we indeed face to face 
with one of those great upheavals which, occurring but 
rarely, make the end of one world and the beginning of 
another? 

Contemporaries, gentlemen, seldom realize the impor- 
tance of the events amid which they live. In their wars 
they count the thousands of the slain, the millions of 
money lost ; but rarely do they take into account the 
far-off consequences of these events, obliged as they are 

This speech was delivered in the Roumanian Chamber of Deputies 
during the sitting of the 16th and 17th of December, 1915. 

Monsieur Jonescu has been the "strong man of Roumania" for 
some time, and at all times since the outbreak of the war has championed 
the cause of the Allied Powers. He it was who was chiefly responsible 
for the entrance of Roumania into the war on the side of France and 
England. 

59 



60 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

by the necessities of life to go on living their everyday 
existence amidst the tragedy all around. 

During the barbaric invasions nobody took into ac- 
count what transformations they involved. Nobody 
knew that therefrom might result the death of civiliza- 
tion for a thousand years. If people had realized the 
meaning of these things, they would have made better 
defense against them. At the time of the French Revo- 
lution people had no idea of the tremendous consequences 
it was to bring, of the far distance they would reach. 
To-day, gentlemen, I think we are confronted, not with 
an ordinary war which will simply involve a certain 
changing of frontiers, leaving other matters very much 
as they were before. We are faced by a catastrophe 
involving the whole of the human race ; we have before 
our eyes the declining twilight of one world, preceding 
the dawn of another and a new world. 

And note, gentlemen, how grave is the problem with 
which humanity is faced to-day ! You see Italy, instead 
of accepting a gratuitous increase of territory, throwing 
herself of her own free will into the horrors of war. And 
it is not alonje the peoples of Europe who are throbbing 
with excitement to-day. Have you never asked your- 
selves what these new nations are doing in the great 
conflict — the young Republics founded by the Anglo- 
Saxons across the ocean? Why is it that we see Canada, 
Australia, New Zealand enrolling from seven to eight 
per cent of their populations as volunteers? Is it 
for love of the mother country? Sentiment does not 
move humanity to such a degree as that. How is it the 
conscience of the United States of America has become 
uneasy? Out of love for England? Nothing of the 
sort, gentlemen. To attack Great Britain has always 
been recognized as a safe and popular note by orators 



TAKE JONESCU 61 

in the United States. It is known as "twisting the 
British Uon's tail." Why, then, is it disturbed, this de- 
mocracy of a hundred million souls, engaged in making 
the most glorious experiment imaginable : the creation 
of a civilization without prejudices, with no class distinc- 
tions, with no monarchy, no militarism, no hindrance 
of any sort — a civilization based solely on nationalist 
sovereignty carried to its extremest limits? 

This entire movement can have but one explanation, 
namely, that we are confronted with a transformation of 
the human race, a transformation which expresses itself 
in the form of a general massacre. It is a struggle be- 
tween two worlds, and we shall see which of the two will 
succeed in obtaining the mastery. Were it otherwise, 
this war would not be possible, and it would not be waged 
with the fury that distinguishes it from all other wars. 

Gentlemen, the truth is that in this war, which was 
most certainly provoked by the Germans, we see the last 
attempt made by a single people to secure for itself a 
universal hegemony. 

If the German soldier were to win to-day, the first 
result would be that the same military force, which is the 
greatest in the world, would also be the greatest naval 
force, and there would be no more independence, no more 
liberty for any one in the world, not even for the great 
American democracy. On the day when one and the 
same State had domination not only on land, but also on 
sea — the day when the Roman Empire should be recon- 
stituted in conformity with the affirmation once made 
by the Emperor William, that the hour would come 
when all men would be happy to call themselves Ger- 
man, just as formerly each exclaimed joyously Civis 
romanus sum — then the free life of each one of us would 
be at an end. 



IT CAN BE DONE 
David Lloyd George 

Hundreds of thousands of precious lives depend upon 
whether you are going to bring this war to an end in a 
year victoriously, or whether it is going to Hnger on in 
blood-stained paths for years. Labor has got the answer. 
It can be done. 

But I wonder whether it will not be too late. Ah, 
fatal words ! Too late in moving here, too late in arriv- 
ing there, too late in coming to this decision, too late in 
starting with enterprises, too late in preparing. In this 
war the footsteps of the allied forces have been dogged 
by the mocking specter of "Too late," and unless we 
quicken our movements damnation will fall on the sacred 
cause for which so much gallant blood has flowed. 

I beg employers and workmen at any rate, not to have 
"Too late" inscribed upon the portals of their work- 
shops, and that is my appeal. Everything depends upon 
it during the next few months in this war. We have 
had the cooperation of our alhes. Great results have 
been arrived at. At the last conference we had of the 
Allies in Paris decisions were reached which will affect 
the whole conduct of the war. The carrying of them out 
depends upon the workmen of this country. The super- 

On December 20, 1915, David Lloyd George, then Minister of Muni- 
tions in the British Cabinet, delivered this splendid criticism of the 
Asquith Ministry before the House of Commons. This speech, with its 
ever recurrent theme "too late," sounded the keynote for the downfall 
of the coalition cabinet. 

62 



DAVID LLOYD GEORGE 63 

ficial facts of the war are for the moment against us. 
All the fundamental facts are in our favor. That means 
we have every reason for looking the facts steadily in the 
face. There is nothing but encouragement in them if 
we look beneath the surface. 

The chances of victory are still with us. We have 
thrown away many chances. But for the most part the 
best still remains. In this war the elements that make 
for success in a short war were with our enemies, and all 
the advantages that make for victory in a long war were 
ours — and they still are. Better preparation before 
the war, interior Hnes, unity of command — those be- 
longed to the enemy. More than that, undoubtedly he 
has shown greater readiness to learn the lessons of the 
war and to adapt himself to them. He had a better con- 
ception at first of what war really meant. Heavy guns, 
machine guns, trench warfare — it was his study. Our 
study was for the sea. We have accomplished our task 
to the last letter of the promise. But the advantages of 
a protracted war are ours. We have an overwhelming 
superiority in the raw material of war. It is still with 
us in spite of the fact that the Central Powers have 
increased their reserves of men and material by their 
successes. 

The overwhelming superiority is still with us. We 
have the command of the sea that gives us ready access 
to neutral countries, and, above all — and this tells in a 
long war — we have the better cause. It is better for 
the heart — nations do not endure to the end for a bad 
cause. All these advantages are ours. But this is the 
moment of intense preparation. It is the moment of 
putting the whole of our energies at home into prepar- 
ing for the blow to be struck abroad. Our fleet and the 
gallantry of the troops of our allies have given us time to 



64 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

muster our reserves. Let us utilize that time without the 
loss of a moment. Let us cast aside the fond illusion 
that you can win victory by an elaborate pretense that 
you are doing so. Let us fling to one side rivalries, trade 
jealousies, jealousies professional or political. Let us be 
one people — one in aim, one in action, one in resolution, 
so to win the most sacred cause ever intrusted to a great 
nation. 



BELGIUM'S DEBT TO FRANCE 
Henry Carton de Wiart 

During the dark hours through which we are now pass- 
ing, Belgium, fettered and mute, tre9,ts with stoic dis- 
dain both the brutahty and the insinuating attitude 
alternating in the system of oppression imposed upon her 
by the enemy. Worn by suffering, he would like her to 
call for Peace in a wail of woe that would be heard even 
at Havre ! He flatters himself that he can compel her 
to betray her companions in this struggle. By mis- 
directed advice in the press, he endeavors to influence 
the members of the Belgian Government. Their slightest 
acts, and even their silence, being misconstrued, com- 
mented upon, and distorted into signs and tokens of a 
desire for making a separate peace, by which means 
Germany hopes to break up the insurmountable resistance 
of her adversaries. Gentlemen, the Belgian people have 
resolved to suffer till the hour of deliverance; justice 
and inevitable reparation have sounded for her, she fol- 
lows the example of her Great Cardinal, that pure image 
of ardent patriotism! 

Belgium, in the darkness that surrounds her, in the 
silence of imprisonment which separates her from the 
rest of the world, has heard with a thrill the distant boom- 
ing of the cannon at Verdun. She understands a great 

A great French-Belgian demonstration was held in Paris, March 11, 
1916, at the Sorbonne. M. de Wiart, Belgian Minister of Justice, ren- 
dered homage, in these words, to France and Frenchmen. 

65 



66 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

struggle is going on there at present, in which French 
valor forms a rampart for the liberty of nations against 
the insane power that has sworn to enslave them. The 
future of Europe depends upon the annihilation of 
Prussian militarism ; more especially the future of small 
nations, desirous of living and flourishing in freedom, 
in order to contribute by their labor and efforts towards 
the general progress of humanity. History has taught 
us that the equilibrium of European power is never 
disturbed but momentarily under the thrust of con- 
querors, and that it can always counteract the oscilla- 
tions their ambition would like to create therein. 

So it will be now. Violence and brutal strength can- 
not kill the lives of peoples having the will to live. The 
ma^ of Europe may be modified, but it will not be traced 
in one and the same shade of color, indicating a sort of 
Holy Germanic Empire, a parody and resurrection of the 
past. The elements of those races having given proof 
of their vitality, will finally reconstitute themselves and 
renew their existence in common, flourishing in an atmos- 
phere which has been purified by the gentle breath of 
peace. The small nations will not then forget what they 
owe to France. 



TOAST TO PREMIER ASQUITH 
SiGNOR Antonio Salandra 

To the illustrious guest who by his presence in Rome 
at this solemn hour in the history of the world has de- 
sired to give us a living proof of the solidarity of the ties 
which bind the great British Empire to new Italy, I 
express with much pleasure and emotion the greetings 
of the Parliament and Government of Italy. 

Parliament and Government are, in Italy as in Eng- 
land, bound together in an indissoluble harmony, 
working under the supreme guarantee of the national 
monarchy — a monarchy which is the protector of all 
the most ardent aspirations of civil and social progress. 
And since your noble efforts, in which, it must be remem- 
bered, we cooperated with all our power, were unsuc- 
cessful in warding off the premeditated conflict which 
for twenty months has been drenching the world with 
blood. Parliament and the Government, in Italy as in 
England, have repeatedly affirmed their determination 
not to lay down their arms until our just cause has been 
victorious. 

Immediately after the adjournment of the historic "Conference of 
the Allies" in Paris on March 28, 1916, Premier Asquith of Great Britain 
made a visit to Rome. The visit had as its objective, of course, a 
"closer cementing of the friendship" between Italy and Great Britain. 

Antonio Salandra was born at Troia, near Foggia, in 1853. For 
several years he was a professor in the University of Rome. In 1891 
he was made Under Secretary of State for Finance and for the Treasury 
in 1893. He became Prime Minister of Italy in 1914, but was replaced 
by Paolo Boselli in August, 1916. 

67 



68 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

How firm and unshakable our determination is you 
will be told to-morrow by the grandson of Victor Emmanuel 
the Great, who will show you the dogged efforts which 
our nation in arms puts forth every day against the 
immense obstacles of nature and the powerful defenses of 
the enemy. We, who humbly but with firmness of heart 
are proceeding to carry out our arduous tasks, inspired 
by the ideals of the immortal authors of our united 
Italy, recall how your country always gave them generous 
and inspiring sympathy. We recall those associates in 
the glorious peace of history — Giuseppe Mazzini sur- 
rounded by affectionate veneration, Giuseppe Garibaldi 
hailed as a conqueror, Camillo di Cavour honored in the 
greatest assembly of the modern world with tributes which 
have never been given any other foreign statesman. 
We recall Gladstone denouncing those Governments 
which oppressed us, and Palmerston who wished to keep 
open the sea-routes for the ships of the Thousand. 

You worthily occupy the place of your great predeces- 
sors, who will never die in the grateful memory of Italians ; 
towards you there will go out from our people a feeling of 
lively sympathy and confidence, of which, as of the warmth 
of our sun, I hope you will take back a kindly impression 
to your country. You can say to your fellow country- 
men that the Parliament and Government of Italy, 
henceforward free, are proud to carry out the last act of 
our national Resurrection, bound to you by an indissolu- 
ble tie of interests, forces, and ideals. I drink to your 
Excellency's health, to the greatness of the British Empire 
in peace and freedom, and to the victory of the Allied 
arms. 



TOAST TO ITALY AND SIGNOR SALANDRA 

Herbert Henry Asquith, Prime Minister of 
Great Britain 

The reception which you have given me here to-day 
and the kind and eloquent words of your Excellency give 
me peculiar gratification. As an old Parliamentarian 
myself, it delights me to have an opportunity of exchang- 
ing fraternal salutations with the members of the Senate 
and the Chamber of Deputies. 

Parliamentary institutions took their rise in England, 
and after many centuries of experience, in all free coun- 
tries, they have been found, with all their imperfections, 
to be the best instrument that has been devised for the 
interpretation and the effective action of national opin- 
ion in the domain of government. 

As you. Sir, have reminded me, the friendship — may 
I not say the affection — between Italy and my country 
is not a plant of recent growth. I can, myself, remember 
the time when Italy was still divided by the accidents of 
history, and the efforts of the great patriots whose names 
you have recalled were directed to the double object of 
expelling the last remnants of foreign rule, and uniting 
in one body, as they had long been united in spirit, all 
the constituent elements of your integral national life. 
In every stage of that struggle it is not an exaggeration 
to say that the emancipators of Italy had with them the 

This is the reply of Mr. Asquith to Signor Salandra's toast on the 
occasion of his (Asquith's) visit to Rome in March, 1916. 

69 



70 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

unfailing interest, the unbounded sympathy, and the 
inextinguishable hopes of the British people. 

In truth. Sir, diverse in many ways as have been the 
lines of our development, the national life in our two 
countries is to a large extent fed from the same sources 
and animated by the same spirit. Hatred of tyranny, 
love of justice, the passion for liberty, the sense of the 
equality of all men before the law, free opinion, free 
speech — these are the ideas that are held and the princi- 
ples of policy which are practiced with equal ardor and 
conviction in Great Britain and in Italy. No wonder, 
then, that the years since your unity was finally achieved 
have been years of unbroken friendship between the two 
nations — a friendship which no misunderstanding or 
mischance has ever been allowed even for a moment to 
imperil. 

Such were our happy relations before the war. To- 
day we are not only friends but Allies, finding in our 
common efforts, our common sacrifices, and our common 
hopes a new and ever more intimate bond of union. 
We watch with equal pride the glorious gallantry and 
skill of the Allied Armies and Navies. This is not a war 
which can be won merely by the multiplication of fight- 
ing men and the accumulation of munitions and material. 
It calls for the organization, the coordination, the con- 
centration in due proportion and proper perspective of 
all the various resources of the Allies. We have to work 
in concert, not only in the battlefield, not only on the high 
seas, not only in the air above and under the waters, but 
also in the not less essential domain of industiy, of trans- 
port, of finance. Finally, I ask, could these efforts and 
sacrifices be inspired by a worthier cause ? Independence 
for the smaller and weaker states, respect for treaties and 
for public law, resolute resistance to the supremacy of 



HERBERT HENRY ASQUITH 71 

brute force ; in a word — for these are all means to an 
end — the free life of a free Europe. Together we stand 
or fall ; and standing together, as we do, we shall achieve 
a decisive and durable victory, not for ourselves alone 
but for posterity, for the future of civilization, for the 
dearest and most precious interests of humanity. 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CONFLICT 
Baron Rosen 

Aside from all political, economic, and psychological 
motives, the deep significance of the conflict before us, 
and the source of the determination of the Allies to fight 
to a finish against Germany's desire to dominate by brutal 
force the whole world, is the conviction rooted in the 
public mind that the German doctrine of "Might is Right" 
constitutes the gravest danger to the human race, and 
cannot be tolerated. 

In such a just cause the whole civilized world should 
have been on the side of the Allies, especially the coun- 
tries geographically so situated that they are in danger 
of having to share the fate of brave and hapless Belgium. 
Why is it, then, that in reality their attitude is some- 
what indifferent? It is undoubtedly in our power to 
remove one of the causes which make the public opinion 
in neutral countries hesitate about taking up an attitude 
favorable to us. 

In this war against German absolutism, in this struggle 
for right and justice, and for the freedom and independence 
of the smaller nations, we fight hand-in-hand with the 

This speech was delivered in June, 1916, by Baron Rosen in the 
Upper Chamber of the Russian Duma. 

The speaker, formerly ambassador to the United States, is one of 
the ablest men in Russia. The particular significance of this liberal 
speech was that it voiced the spirit of liberal Russia nine months before 
the Revolution. As a result of it, Baron Rosen was dismissed from the 
appointive Upper Council, and the final reaction toward despotism set 
in, which led directly to the Revolution. The speech is, therefore, 
really historic. 

72 



BARON ROSEN 73 

most advanced peoples in Europe, and we cannot win 
the sympathy of the civilized world unless we bring our 
internal front, so to speak, on a level with the political 
ideas of our valiant allies, and apply them in the adminis- 
tration of our border provinces and in the government of 
the nationalities forming part of the population of Russia. 

There are two diametrically opposed methods of govern- 
ment. One is the method adopted by our allies. Its 
results were seen in the enthusiastic outbursts of patriot- 
ism throughout the self-governing British Colonies, and 
even among the non-English elements — the Irish, 
French-Canadians, Boers, and Indians. They all rushed 
to the defense of the British Empire. Thanks to this 
method of government it was possible for England to 
intrust the chief command of the troops in South Africa 
to that very general who, sixteen years ago, led the Boers 
against the English, and who is now Prime Minister of 
British South Africa. 

The other method is that of the Germans. They have 
applied it to the population of Posen, Schleswig, Alsace 
and Lorraine, with the result that even the pure German 
portion of the population of Alsace retained its passionate 
attachment for France, who never treated them as second- 
rate citizens, or as possible traitors to their country. 

In our policy toward our border provinces, and toward 
the so-called non-Russian nationalities, we have, to the 
greatest detriment of the real interests of Russia, followed 
closely the German system of government. We have 
even improved upon it by an addition of medieval reli- 
gious intolerance. People may say that war is decided 
by military power and not by the degree of sympathy 
which neutral countries may show for the home policy of 
this or that State. The German Government obviously 
regards the question in a different light, or else it would 



74 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

not be spending millions on propaganda in all countries, 
even the remotest in the world. Not only do we not 
counteract this propaganda, but by our domestic pohcy 
we supply our enemies with weapons with which to 
set against us the public opinion of such countries as the 
United States of America — the only great neutral power 
— and our neighbor Sweden. It is inconceivable that 
those who guide our home policy should not be able to 
realize that by our medieval treatment of the Jewish 
population of Russia, and by our systematic outrages 
upon the constitutional habit of mind of the Finnish 
people, we are helping enormously the pro-German propa- 
ganda in neutral countries which our enemies carry on 
with lavish means to the detriment of the cause of the 
Allies. The question is, why has not our Government 
settled these questions once and for all, as it did — alas, 
so late — the question of Polish autonomy ? The only 
answer is that our Government did not wish to renounce 
a traditional policy so dear to the hearts of our militant 
Nationalists. 

It is therefore incumbent upon the Legislative Cham- 
bers to assist the Government in this matter, and to intro- 
duce bills abolishing all the restrictive laws against the 
Jews, and canceling the laws of July 17 concerning Finland. 
Such measures would undoubtedly facihtate the task of 
the Government in international matters, and would meet 
with the lively appreciation of our valiant allies. 

We must bear in mind that this great European War 
is not only a conflict of interests, but also of ideas and 
principles. In fighting against German militarism, Russia 
is taking her stand on the side of those who fight for the 
triumph of the idea of Right and Freedom, and it is 
necessary that in Russia there shall henceforth be no 
people oppressed or deprived of their inherent rights. 



THE ROLE OF FRANCE IN THIS WAR 
Raymond Poincare 

At the call of their country in danger they started up, 
seized their weapons, and hurried forth to protect their 
frontiers. Old as well as young, fathers as well as sons, 
shed their blood in one sublime cause — the safety of 
their country and the future of humanity. 

The French had too frequently shown their bravery, 
for any one to dare to doubt their military worth ; but, on 
the strength of I know not what legend, we were believed 
to be incapable of long-thought-out plans and tenacious 
effort. Two years have passed without shaking French 
resolution, without weakening French constancy. 

It is because we have offered invincible resistance, not 
only to the blows inflicted by the German armies, but 
also to insidious German propaganda and campaigns for 
demoralization, that the Allied Staffs have been able to 
come to an understanding which is daily growing more 
definite, that their governments are more closely united 
and that our combined action has, with time, and under 
favorable impulse acquired more strength and power. 

Just as our country during these long months has given 
splendid proof of its patience, reflexion, and sang-froid, so 

"On July 14, 1916, France's National Fete Day, at an official cere- 
mony organized in Paris in memory of the men who have died for their 
country, M. Poincar6, in the presence of battalions from all the allied 
troops, justly rendered homage to our departed heroes." — Taken from 
the Paris Chamber of Commerce Bulletin. 

75 



76 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

our generals, officers, non-commissioned officers and men 
— whom France loves to associate together in her praise, 
for they all share the glory of the battlefield — are en- 
titled to have some of the finest pages in the annals of our 
history consecrated to their memory. 

During endless weeks, under the concentrated fire of 
artillery of all calibers, over ground soaked with rain, 
and ploughed up by shells, our battalions, defying the 
enemy, defended the outposts of Verdun step by step, 
unaware until the last few days how greatly their endur- 
ance and stoicism would facilitate the combined opera- 
tions of the Allies elsewhere. Humanity has never yet 
witnessed any sight of more heroic grandeur. 

The Central Empires can retain no illusion as to the 
possibility of reducing the Allies and wresting from their 
lassitude a peace which for the Prussian militarists would 
be but a stratagem wherewith to mask preparation for 
fresh aggression. It is in vain that our enemies study the 
military map which they used to invoke with such boast- 
ful satisfaction. They perceive now with uneasiness, 
that, on the Somme as on the Styr, at the foot of the 
Karpathians as on the summits of the Alps, the lines upon 
that changing map have already been altered consider- 
ably, and they know that to make it complete, it is neces- 
sary to add thereto the seas which are closed to them, 
and the colonies which have been taken from them. 
They well know also that the strength of the belligerent 
countries is not so much reckoned on the geographical 
position of field-trenches, as upon the condition of the 
fighting troops, their reserves, their capacity for attacking 
and for resisting attack, and upon the moral temper of 
the peoples and armies. 

As for us, we shall not fail, even if we were fighting for 
honor alone, and we are fighting for honor and for life. 



RAYMOND POINCARfi 77 

To be, or not to be, is the poignant problem before the 
great European nations, and for a free democracy such as 
ours it would be "not to be," if we vegetated, struggling 
in the suffocating and unhealthy shadow of a German 
Empire, strong enough to hold over the whole of Europe 
its heavy hegemony. 

No, by the grief of our French families, by the long 
torture of our occupied country, by the blood of our sol- 
diers; no, we shall not suffer our sorrow to weaken our 
will ! The more we hate war, the more passionately 
must we labor to prevent its return, the more must we 
work and pray that peace may bring us together with the 
complete restitution of our invaded provinces — invaded 
provinces of yesterday, and invaded provinces of forty-six 
years ago — the reparation of Right violated at the ex- 
pense of France and the Allies, and the guarantees neces- 
sary to the definitive safeguarding of our national freedom. 



VERDUN 
Raymond Poincare 

Gentlemen, these walls mark the spot where the great- 
est hopes of imperial Germany were dashed to pieces. It 
was here that she sought to achieve blustering ostentatious 
success, and here that France quietly and firmly replied : 
"You shall not pass." When the attack against Verdun 
began, on February 21st, the enemy had a double objec- 
tive in view : he intended to forestall a general offensive 
on the part of the Allies ; and at the same time to strike a 
blow, that would be much talked of, by rapidly capturing 
a fortress whose historical fame would, in the eyes of the 
German people, increase its military importance. The 
ruins of these Germanic dreams are now lying at our feet. 

The splendid troops, who, under the command of 
Generals Petain and Nivelle, held out against the formi- 
dable onslaught of the German Army for many long months, 
frustrated the enemy's designs by their valor and their 
spirit of self-sacrifice. It is they who have enabled all 
our Allies to work, with increasing activity, for the pro- 
duction of war material; it is they who have now bril- 
liantly marked by the light of their heroism the boundary 
of Germanic force, thus imparting to the world confidence 
in our final victory ; in short, it was the resistance of these 

This speech was delivered at Verdun, September 13, 1916. The 
occasion for the address was the conferring of medals and decorations 
upon the heroic city of Verdun, "in recognition of its valorous defense," 
by the French and Allied Governments. The ceremony took place in 
the casements of the citadel. 

78 



RAYMOND POINCARfi 79 

troops which, by assuring the reahzation of the plan 
formed by the different Staffs, left Russia time to carry 
out her triumphant offensives of June 4th and July 2d. 
It also enabled Italy to make her brilliant attack on 
Gorizia, on June 25th, and, from July 1st on, allowed the 
Anglo-French forces to conduct their offensive on the 
Somme. It also permitted the army of the East to make 
its preparations, to concentrate its different elements, and 
lend fraternal assistance to our new Allies, the Rumanians, 
in their conflict with Germano-Bulgarians. Honor to the 
soldiers of Verdun ! they sowed the seed of the coming 
harvest and watered it with their blood. 

You see here, gentlemen, the just return of things. 
The name of Verdun, to which Germany in her fond dream 
had given a symbolic signification that was to have 
shortly evoked — she thought — in the minds of men, a 
brilliant defeat for our armies, together with the irre- 
mediable discouragement of our country and the passive 
acceptance of a German peace ; this name stands, hence- 
forth, in neutral countries, and among our Allies, for what 
is noblest, purest, and best in the French character. It 
has become, so to speak, a synonym for Patriotism, 
Bravery, and Generosity. Throughout the ages, in every 
corner of the globe, the name of Verdun will resound like 
a shout of Victory and Joy, sent up by a free human race. 



THE WAR'S LEGACY OF HATRED 
Maurice Maeterlinck 

Before we reach the end of this war, whose days of 
grief and terror now seem to be numbered, let us weigh 
for the last time in our minds the words of hatred and 
malediction which it has so often wrung from us. 

We have to deal with the strangest of enemies. He 
has deliberately, scientifically, in full possession of his 
senses, without necessity or excuse, revived all the crimes 
which we had believed to be forever buried in the bar- 
barous past. He has trampled under foot all the pre- 
cepts which the human race had so painfully gleaned out 
of the cruel darknesses of its origins ; he has violated all 
the laws of justice, of humanity, of loyalty, of honor, from 
the highest, which almost touch the divine, to the simplest 
and most elementary, which still appertain to the lower 
orders. There is no longer any doubt on this point. The 
proof of it has been established and reestablished, the 
certitude definitively acquired. 

But, on the other hand, it is no less certain that the 
enemy has displayed virtues which it would not be right 
for us to deny; for one honors one's self by recognizing 

In October of 1916 this article appeared in Les Annales, Paris. It 
was later translated for the Current History Magazine, through whose 
courtesy it is here reprinted. 

The Belgian Maeterlinck, born 1862, is well known on this side of 
the Atlantic as an author and playwright. He began publishing his 
works about 1890. Among his best-known plays are "Pelleas and 
Melisande," "The Blue Bird," and "The Unknown Guest." 

80 



MAURICE MAETERLINCK 81 

the valor of those whom one combats. He has gone to 
death in deep, compact, discipHned masses, with a bhnd, 
obstinate, hopeless heroism, for which history furnishes 
no example equally somber, and which often has com- 
pelled our admiration and our pity. 

I am well aware that this heroism is not like that 
which we love. For us heroism should be, above all, 
voluntary, free from all restraint, active, ardent, joyous, 
spontaneous ; whereas with them it is mixed with much 
of servility, of passivity, of sadness, of gloomy, ignorant 
submission, and of fears more or less base. Yet in a 
moment of peril these distinctions vanish for the most 
part ; no force on earth could drive toward death a nation 
that did not have within itself the will to confront death. 

Our soldiers have not deceived themselves on this point. 
Ask those who return from the trenches. They execrate 
the enemy; they have a horror of the aggressor, unjust, 
arrogant, gross, too often cruel and perfidious ; they do 
not hate the man, they pity him ; and, after the battle, 
in the defenseless wounded or the disarmed prisoner they 
recognize with astonishment a brother in misery who, like 
themselves, has been trying to do his duty, and who has 
laws which he considers high and necessary. Underneath 
the intolerable enemy they see the unfortunate mortal 
who likewise is bearing the burden of life. 

Leaving out of account the unpardonable aggression, 
and the inexpiable violation of treaties, very little is lack- 
ing to make this war, despite its madness, a bloody but 
magnificent testimonial of grandeur, of heroism, of the 
spirit of sacrifice. Humanity was ready to raise itself 
above itself, to surpass all that it had achieved up to this 
hour. And it has done it. We have not known of nations 
that were capable, through months and years, of renounc- 
ing their rest, their security, their wealth, their well- 



82 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

being, all that they possessed and loved, even Hfe itself, 
to accomplish what they believed to be their duty. We 
had never seen whole nations that were able to under- 
stand and admit that the happiness of each of those living 
at the moment of trial does not count when it is a ques- 
tion of the honor of those no longer living or of the happi- 
ness of those not yet born. 

Here we stand on summits that had never before been 
attained. And if, on the part of our enemies, this un- 
exampled renunciation had not been poisoned at its 
source, if the war which they wage against us had been 
as beautiful, as loyal, as generous, as chivalrous as that 
which we wage against them, one might believe that it 
was to be the last war, and that it was to end, not in 
mortal combat, but in the awakening from a bad dream 
with a noble and fraternal astonishment. They have 
not permitted this to be so ; and it is their deception, we 
may rest assured, that the future will have the greatest 
difficulty in pardoning. 

Now, what are we going to do? Must we go on hat- 
ing to the end of our days? Hatred is the heaviest load 
that man can bear on this earth, and we should be bowed 
down by the burden. But, on the other hand, we do not 
wish to be again the victims of trust and love. Here 
once more our soldiers, in their clear-eyed simpHcity and 
nearness to truth, anticipate the future and teach us what 
is best to do and not to do. As we have seen, they do 
not hate the individual, but they do not trust him. They 
do not see the human being in him until he is unarmed. 
They know from sad experience that as long as he has 
weapons he does not resist the mad impulse to injure, to 
betray, to kill, and that he becomes good only when he is 
powerless. 

Is he thus by nature, or has he been made thus by those 



MAURICE MAETERLINCK 83 

who lead him? Have the chiefs carried away the whole 
nation, or has the whole nation driven its chiefs? Have 
the leaders made the people like themselves, or have the 
people chosen the leaders and supported them only be- 
cause they resembled themselves ? Did the disease come 
from below or from above, or was it everywhere? This 
is the great obscure point of the awful adventure. It is 
not easy to explain, and it is still less easy to find an 
excuse. 

If they prove that they have been deceived and cor- 
rupted by their masters, they are proving at the same 
time that they are less intelligent, less firmly grounded in 
justice, honor, and humanity — in a word, less civilized 
^- than those whom they pretend to have a right to sub- 
jugate in the name of a superiority which their own demon- 
stration annihilates; on the other hand, if they do not 
prove that their errors, their perfidies, and their cruelties, 
— which can no longer be denied — are to be imputed 
solely to their masters, these sins fall back upon their own 
heads with all their pitiless weight. I do not know how 
they will escape the horns of this dilemma, nor what deci- 
sion will be rendered by the future, which is wiser than 
the past, even as the morning, to quote the old Slavic 
proverb, is wiser than the night. Meanwhile let us imitate 
the prudence of our admirable soldiers, who know better 
than we do what path to follow. 



FRANCE AND THE NEW COMMANDMENTS 
Paul Deschanel 

Let us hearken to the voice of the trench and the 
tomb ; what comes from there is a cry of love. Never 
has the French family been more united. Frenchmen 
were following different roads, but they have come 
together at the summit. The same devotion, the same 
ideal ! The heroes facing death know that before the 
brief flame of life is extinguished in them it lights another, 
it is immortal. And the enemy does not comprehend 
that the thing which was tearing us apart is what is now 
uniting us : the passion for right. 

France of St. Louis, of Joan of Arc, of St. Vincent de 
Paul, of Pascal ; France of Rabelais, of Descartes, of 
Moliere, of Voltaire ; France of the Crusades and France 
of the Revolution, you are sacred to us, and your sons 
are equal in our hearts as they are in the face of peril. 
Those who do not discover the common peak under the 
same rays have not looked long enough or far enough. 

Yes, this sublime array of youth goes to death as to a 
higher life. Will that higher life be the life of France? 

Paul Eugene Louis Deschanel has held several of the highest offices 
in the gift of the French Nation, being several times President and 
Vice President of the French Chamber of Deputies. He was born in 
1856 and obtained his education at the College St.-Barbe. He has pub- 
lished many studies of social, political, and economic conditions in his 
native land. 

The address here given was delivered on the occasion of the meeting 
of the Academics of the Institute of France in Paris, October 26, 1916. 

84 



PAUL DESCHANEL 85 

The great silence of these deserts full of men, where the 
cannon alone speaks, will not hover above them forever. 
Controversy is the soul of progress. It is because it has 
been lacking in Germany that the world is on fire. 

I do not know whether the phrase, "conflict of the 
classes," still expresses the meaning of those who formerly 
employed it, for since 1914 not a single voice in Germany 
has been raised against the invasion of Belgium and 
France ; but never have men seen more clearly the grandeur 
of poverty, the obligations of wealth, the truth that souls 
are not measured by conditions. There are the things 
that one possesses and the things that one values, and the 
two comprise the whole patrimony of a nation. The 
little white crosses which mark our battlefields from the 
Marne to the Seine and from the sea to the Vosges are 
terrible masters of equality. May they draw the living 
closer together ! 

The invasion of Belgium, the burning of Louvain and 
Rheims, the assassination of Miss Cavell, the torpedoing 
of steamships, the murder of Jacquet, the execution of 
Captain Fryatt, the uprooting of the civil populations in 
our invaded provinces, the rallying of all the professors 
of law to justify these crimes — these things indicate a 
nation overcome by vertigo, like those hordes on the Yser 
which rushed forward in serried columns, drunk with 
ether. One imagines above their heads the Valkyries of 
Walhalla and the fierce divinities of their impenetrable 
forests. "Let insolence germinate," says ^schylus in 
" The Persians " ; " what grows up is the fruition of crime ; 
one gathers a harvest of sorrows." 

And now we hear repeated every day: "We must de- 
stroy German militarism, the Prussian military caste." 
Yes, without doubt ; and even in Germany the abusive 
privileges of that caste have callf^d forth jeers, protests 



86 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

in the press, in fiction, in the theater, in the Reichstag. 
But we know how the Saverne affair ended. It is the 
army that has created independence ; it is the army that 
guarantees the power and wealth of the empire. Ger- 
many is proud of it, loves it, has made a cult of it. Her 
"intellectuals," better informed on that point than the 
stranger who judges others by himself, cry: "We resent 
it that the enemies of Germany dare to oppose German 
science to what they call Prussian militarism. The spirit 
of the army is the same as that of the nation." 

The truth is that in Germany, as elsewhere, national 
sentiment has been strongest ; it has carried all before it, 
rivalries of caste, of class, and of creed. To judge a nation 
aright one must look upon the whole of it at once, like 
the aviator who hovers above the ocean and sees currents 
which others cannot see. 

If Frenchmen ought to know Germany better, they 
ought also to make France better known. " A worn-out 
nation!" said Bismarck. " A degenerate people ! " cried 
Wilham II. Worn-out, degenerate, the France of Pasteur, 
of Berthelot, of Henri Poincare! A worn-out nation, a 
degenerate people, the France of Renan and Taine, 
which for forty years, in all Hues of thought, in poetry, 
philosophy, history, drama, fiction, criticism, has mag- 
netized the minds of the world! A degenerate nation, 
the nation that has produced at the same time illustrious 
musicians and pleiades of painters, sculptors, architects, 
engravers, such as the world had not seen since the 
Renaissance ! Worn out, the nation which, between two 
wars, has created the second largest colonial empire in the 
world ! And tell me : in what country, in what epoch, 
have the hopes and aspirations of mankind found finer 
orators ? 

Our institutions were supposed to be unworthy to en- 



PAUL DESCHANEL 87 

dure, and yet they resist the most enormous upheaval of 
all the ages. The republic was not to be allowed to con- 
clude alUances, and yet France has never had more allies, 
or more powerful ones. 

And mark the climax! Yes, even after Marathon, 
Salamis, and Plataea, even after Valmy, Jemappes, and 
Fleurus, France touches the highest peak; for Athenian 
civilization was founded on slavery, and the armies of 
the Revolution were restricted armies, while to-day it is 
all France that is fighting — for all men ! Through her 
we are living the greatest life that men have ever lived, 
for what is the life of humanity if not an increase of 
justice? 



THE DAY OF THE DEAD 

Maurice Maeterlinck 

Our memories are peopled by a multitude of heroes, 
stricken in the flower of youth, and far different from that 
procession of yore, pale and worn out, which counted 
almost solely the aged and sickly, who were already 
scarcely alive when they left this earth. To-day in all 
our houses, in town, in country, in palace, and in cottage, 
a young man dead lives and rules in all the beauty of his 
strength. He fills the poorest, darkest dwelling with 
glory, such as it had never dreamed of. It is terrible 
that we should have this experience, the most pitiless 
mankind has known, but, now that the ordeal is nearly 
over, we can think of the perhaps unexpected fruits which 
we shall reap. 

One will soon see the breach widening and destinies 
diverging between those nations which have acquired all 
these dead and all this glory, and those who have been 
deprived of them and it. And one will be astonished to 
find that those which have lost most are those which will 
have kept their wealth, and their men. There are losses 
which are priceless gain, and there are gains in which 
one's future is lost. There are dead whom the living 
cannot replace and whose memory does things which no 
living bodies can do, and we are each of us now agents 
of some one greater, nobler, braver, wiser, and more alive 

This is an extract from Maeterlinck's beautiful tribute to Belgium's 
dead. It first appeared in the Paris Figaro on All Souls' Day, 1916. 

88 



MAURICE MAETERLINCK 89 

than ourselves. He will be, with all his comrades, our 
judge. 

If it be true that the dead weigh the souls of the living 
and that our fate depends upon their verdict, he will be 
our guide and our champion. For this is the first time 
since history revealed to us her catastrophes that man has 
felt round about him and within him the influence of such 
a multitude of heroic dead. 



ENGLAND'S ANSWER 
David Lloyd George 

I APPEAR before the House of Commons to-day with the 
most terrible responsibility that can fall upon the shoulders 
of any living man. As the chief Minister of the Crown, 
and in the midst of the most stupendous war in which 
this country ever has been engaged, a war upon which 
its destinies depend, the responsibilities which rest upon 
the government have been accentuated by the declaration 
of the German Chancellor, and I propose to deal with 
that at once. 

The statement made by him in the German Reichstag 
has been followed by a note presented to us by the United 
States Minister, without any note or comment. The 
answer which is given by the government will be given 
in full accord with all our various Allies. Already there 
has been an interchange of views, not upon the note itself, 
because it has only recently arrived, but upon the spirit 
which impelled the note. The note is only a paraphrase 
of the speech, so that the subject matter of the note itself 
has been discussed informally with the Allies, and I am 

The reply of David Lloyd George to the German Chancellor's peace 
proposals has been called "one of the most important speeches ever 
made in the history of the world." It was sent through the United 
States Government to the Allied Powers. 

Mr. George appeared before the House of Commons on the after- 
noon of December 19, 1916, and delivered this historic address. It was 
his first speech as the head of the British Government. He had accepted 
the Premiership only a few days before. 

90 



DAVID LLOYD GEORGE 91 

glad to be able to say that we arrived separately at iden- 
tical conclusions. 

I am very glad that the first answer was given to the 
German Chancellor by France and by Russia. They have 
unquestionably the right to give the first answer. The 
enemy is still on their soil and their sacrifices have been 
greater. The answer they have given has already ap- 
peared in all the papers, and I stand here to-day on behalf 
of the government to give a clear and definite support to 
the statement they have already made. And here let me 
say that any man or set of men who wantonly and with- 
out sufficient cause prolongs a terrible conflict like this 
has on his soul a crime that oceans could not cleanse ; on 
the other hand, a man or set of men, who from a sense of 
war-weariness abandoned the struggle without achieving 
the high purpose for which we entered upon it, would be 
guilty of the costliest poltroonery ever perpetrated by 
any statesman. 

I should like to quote the well-known words of Abra- 
ham Lincoln under similar conditions : 

"We accepted the war for an object, a worthy object. 
The war will end when that object is attained. Under 
God I hope it will never end until that time." 

Are we to achieve that object by accepting the invita- 
tions of the German Chancellor? That is the only ques- 
tion we have to put to ourselves. 

There has been some talk about the proposals of peace. 
What are those proposals? There are none. To enter 
into a conference, on the invitation of Germany, pro- 
claiming herself victorious, without any knowledge of the 
proposals she intends to make, is putting our heads into 
a noose with the rope end in the hands of the Germans. 

This country is not altogether without experience in 
these matters. This is not the first time we have fought 



92 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

a great military despotism overshadowing Europe, and it 
won't be the first time we have helped to overthrow a 
military despotism. 

We have an uncomfortable historical memory of these 
things, and can recall one of the greatest of these despots, 
whose favorite device was to appear in the garb of an 
angel of peace, either when he wished time to assimilate 
his conquests or to reorganize his forces for fresh con- 
quests ; or, secondly, when his subjects showed symptoms 
of fatigue and war-weariness, an appeal was always made 
in the name of humanity. He demanded an end to the 
bloodshed at which he professed himself horrified, although 
he himself was mainly responsible. 

Our ancestors were taken in once, and bitterly they 
and Europe rue it. The time was devoted to reorganiz- 
ing his forces for a deadlier attack than ever upon the 
liberties of Europe. Examples of this kind cause us to 
regard this note with a considerable measure of reminis- 
cent disquietude. 

We feel we ought to know before we give favorable 
consideration to such an invitation, whether Germany is 
prepared to accede to the only terms on which it is pos- 
sible for peace to be obtained and maintained in Europe. 

What are these terms? They have been repeatedly 
stated by all the leading statesmen of the Allies. All I 
can do is to quote what the leader of the House, Mr. 
Bonar Law, said last week when he made practically the 
same statement of terms as those put forward by Mr. 
Asquith — "restitution, reparation, guarantees against 
repetition." So that there shall be no mistakes (and it is 
important that there should be no mistake in a matter of 
the life and death of millions), let me say complete resti- 
tution, full reparation, and effectual guarantees. 

Did the German Chancellor use a single phrase that 



DAVID LLOYD GEORGE 93 

would indicate that he was prepared to accept such terms ? 
Was there a hint of restitution? Was there any sugges- 
tion of reparation? Was there any indication of any 
security for the future, that this outrage on civihzation 
would not again be perpetrated at the first profitable 
opportunity ? 

The very substance and style of the speech constituted 
a denial of peace on the only terms on which peace is 
possible. He is not even conscious now that Germany 
has committed an offense against the rights of free nations. 
Listen to this quotation: "Not for an instant had they 
(the Central Powers) swerved from the conviction that a 
respe'ct for the rights of free nations is not in any degree in- 
compatible with their own rights and legitimate interests." 
When did they discover that? Where was the respect 
for the rights of other nations in Belgium? 

That, it is said, was for self-defense. Menaced, I sup- 
pose, by the overwhelming army of Belgium, the Germans 
were intimidated into invading Belgium, burning Belgian 
cities and villages, massacring thousands of inhabitants, 
old and young, carrying others into slavery at the very 
moment when the note was being written about the 
"unswerving conviction of the respect for the rights of 
other nations." 

What guarantee is there that these terrors will not be 
repeated in the future ? That if we enter into a treaty of 
peace, we shall put an end to Prussian militarism? If 
there is to be no reckoning for these atrocities by land and 
sea, are we to grasp the hand which perpetrated them 
without any reparation being made? We have to exact 
damages. We have begun ; already it has cost us much. 
We must exact it now, so as not to leave such a grim in- 
heritance for our children. Much as we all long for peace, 
deeply as we are horrified at the war, their note and 



94 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

speech give small encouragement to hope for an honor- 
able and lasting peace. What hope is given in that 
speech ? The whole root and cause of this bitterness — 
the arrogant spirit of the Prussian military caste — will 
it not be as dominant as ever if we patch up a peace now ? 
The very speech resounds with the boast of the Prussian 
military triumph; the very appeal for peace was de- 
livered ostentatiously from the triumphal chariot of 
Prussian militarism. 

We must keep a steadfast eye on the purpose for which 
we entered the war. Otherwise the great sacrifices we 
are making will be all in vain. The German note states 
that for the defense of their existence and for the freedom 
of national development the Central Powers were con- 
strained to take up arms. Such phrases cannot but 
deceive those who listen to them. They are intended to 
deceive the German nation into supporting the designs 
of the Prussian military caste. 

Who ever wished to put an end to their national exist- 
ence or to the freedom of their national development? 
We welcomed their development so long as it was on 
behalf of peace. The greater their development in that 
direction, the greater would humanity be enriched by 
that development. 

That was not our design and it is not our purpose now. 
The Allies entered into this war to defend Europe against 
the aggression of Prussian military domination, and they 
must insist that the end is a most complete and effective 
guarantee against the possibility of that caste ever again 
disturbing the peace of Europe. 

Prussia, since she got into the hands of that caste, has 
been a bad neighbor — arrogant, threatening, bullying, 
shifting boundaries at her will, taking one fair field after 
another from weaker neighbors and adding them to her 



DAVID LLOYD GEORGE 95 

own dominions, ostentatiously piling up weapons of 
offense, ready on a moment's notice to be used. She has 
always been an unpleasant, disturbing neighbor to us. 
She got thoroughly on the nerves of Europe, and there 
was no peace near where she dwelt. It is difficult for 
those who were fortunate enough to hve thousands of 
miles away, to understand what it has meant to those 
who lived near. Even here, with the protection of the 
broad seas between us, we know what a disturbing factor 
the Prussians were with their constant naval menace. 
But even we can hardly realize what it has meant to 
France and Russia. Several times there were threats. 
There were two of them within the lifetime of this genera- 
tion which presented an alternative of war or humiliation. 

There were many of us who had hoped that internal 
influences in Germany would have been strong enough to 
check and ultimately to eliminate this hectoring. All 
our hopes proved illusory, and now that this great war 
has been forced by the Prussian military leaders upon 
France, Russia, Italy, and ourselves, it would be a cruel 
folly not to see to it that this swashbuckling through the 
streets of Europe to the disturbance of all harmless and 
peaceful citizens shall be dealt with now as an offense 
against the law of nations. 

The mere word that led Belgium to her own destruction 
will not satisfy Europe any more. We all believed it; 
we all trusted in it. It gave way at the first pressure of 
temptation, and Europe has been plunged into this vortex 
of blood. We will therefore wait until we hear what 
terms and guarantees the German Government offers 
other than those, better than those, surer than those, 
which she so lightly broke. Meanwhile we ought to put 
our trust in an unbroken army rather than in a broken 
faith. 



A LEAGUE FOR PEACE 

WooDRow Wilson 

The equality of nations upon which peace must be 
founded if it is to last must be an equality of rights ; the 
guarantees exchanged must neither recognize nor imply 
a difference between big nations and small, between those 
that are powerful and those that are weak. Right must 
be based upon the common strength, not upon the indi- 
vidual strength, of the nations upon whose concert peace 
will depend. Equality of territory or of resources there 
of course cannot be ; nor any other sort of equality not 
gained in the ordinary peaceful and legitimate develop- 
ment of the peoples themselves. But no one asks or 
expects anything more than an equality of rights. Man- 
kind is looking now for freedom of life, not for equipoises 
of power. 

And there is a deeper thing involved than even equality 
of right among organized nations. No peace can last, or 
ought to last, which does not recognize and accept the 
principle that governments derive all their just powers 
from the consent of the governed, and that no right any- 
where exists to hand peoples about from sovereignty to 
sovereignty as if they were property. I take it for 
granted, for instance, if I may venture upon a single 

On January 22, 1917, the President of the United States delivered 
before the Senate a speech which his admirers claim to be the "most 
important pronouncement of an American president since the Monroe 
Doctrine." 

96 



WOODROW WILSON 97 

example, that statesmen everywhere are agreed that 
there should be a united, independent, and autonomous 
Poland ; and that henceforth inviolable security of life, 
of worship, and of industrial and social development 
should be guaranteed to all peoples who have hved hither- 
to under the power of governments devoted to a faith 
and purpose hostile to their own. 

I speak of this, not because of any desire to exalt an 
abstract political principle which has always been held 
very dear by those who have sought to build up liberty 
in America, but for the same reason that I have spoken 
of the other conditions of peace which seem to me 
clearly indispensable, — because I wish frankly to un- 
cover realities. Any peace which does not recognize and 
accept this principle will inevitably be upset. It will not 
rest upon the affections or the convictions of mankind. 
The ferment of spirit of whole populations will fight subtly 
and constantly against it, and all the world will sym- 
pathize. The world can be at peace only if its life is 
stable, and there can be no stability where the will is in 
rebellion, where there is not tranquillity of spirit and a 
sense of justice, of freedom, and of right. 

So far as practicable, moreover, every great people 
now struggling towards a full development of its re- 
sources and of its powers should be assured a direct 
outlet to the great highways of the sea. Where this 
cannot be done by the cession of territory, it can no 
doubt be done by the neutralization of direct rights of 
way under the general guarantee which will assure the 
peace itself. With a right comity of arrangement no 
nation need be shut away from free acrcess to the open 
paths of the world's commerce. 

And the paths of the sea must alike in law and in fact 
be free. The freedom of the seas is the sine qua non of 



98 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

peace, equality, and cooperation. No doubt a some- 
what radical reconsideration of many of the rules of 
international practice hitherto thought to be established 
may be necessary in order to make the seas indeed free 
and common in practically all circumstances for the use 
of mankind, but the motive for such changes is convinc- 
ing and compelling. There can be no trust or intimacy 
between the peoples of the world without them. The 
free, constant, unthreatened intercourse of nations is 
an essential part of the process of peace and of develop- 
ment. It need not be difficult either to define ot to secure 
the freedom of the seas if the governments of th^e world 
sincerely desire to come to an agreement concerning it. 

It is a problem closely connected with the limitation of 
naval armaments and the cooperation of the navies of 
the world in keeping the seas at once free and safe. And 
the question of limiting naval armaments opens the 
wider and perhaps more difficult question of the limitation 
of armies, and of all programs of military preparation. 
Difficult and delicate as these questions are, they must 
be faced with the utmost candor and decided in a spirit 
of real accommodation, if peace is to come with healing 
in its wings, and come to stay. Peace cannot be had 
without concession and sacrifice. There can be no sense 
of safety and equality among the nations if great prepon- 
derating armaments are henceforth to continue here and 
there to be built up and maintained. The statesmen of 
the world must plan for peace, and nations must adjust 
and accommodate their policy to it as they have planned 
for war and made ready for pitiless contest and rivalry. 
The question of armaments, whether on land or sea, is 
the most immediately and intensely practical question 
connected with the future fortunes of nations and of 
mankind. 



WOODROW WILSON 99 

I have spoken upon these great matters without reserve 
and with the utmost expHcitness because it has seemed to 
me to be necessary if the world's yearning desire for peace 
was anywhere to find free voice and utterance. Perhaps 
I am the only person in high authority amongst all the 
peoples of the world who is at liberty to speak and hold 
nothing back. I am speaking as an individual, and yet 
I am speaking also, of course, as the responsible head of 
a great Government, and I feel confident that I have said 
what the people of the United States would wish me to 
say. May I not add that I hope and believe that I am 
in effect speaking for liberals and friends of humanity 
in every nation and of every program of liberty? I 
would fain believe that I am speaking for the silent mass 
of mankind everywhere who have as yet had no place or 
opportunity to speak their real hearts out concerning 
the death and ruin which they see has come already upon 
the persons and the homes they hold most dear. 

And in holding out the expectation that the people 
and Government of the United States will join the other 
civilizations of the world in guaranteeing the perma- 
nence of peace upon such terms as I have named, I speak 
with the greater boldness and confidence because it is 
clear to every man who can think that there is in this 
promise no breach in either our traditions or our policy 
as a nation, but a fulfilment, rather, of all that we have 
professed or striven for. 

I am proposing, as it were, that the nations should 
with one accord adopt the doctrine of President Monroe 
as the doctrine of the world ; that no nation should seek 
to extend its polity over any other nation or people, but 
that every people should be left free to determine its own 
polity, its own way of development, unhindered, unthreat- 
ened, unafraid, the little along with the great and powerful. 



100 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

I am proposing that all nations henceforth avoid en- 
tangling alliances which would draw them into competi- 
tions of power, catch them in a net of intrigue and selfish 
rivalry, and disturb their own affairs with influences 
intruded from without. There is no entangling alliance 
in a concert of power. When all unite to act in the same 
sense and with the same purpose, all act in the common 
interest and are free to live their own lives under a com- 
mon protection. 

I am proposing government by the consent of the 
governed ; that freedom of the seas which in international 
conference after conference representatives of the United 
States have urged with the eloquence of those who are 
the convinced disciples of liberty; and that moderation 
of armaments which makes of armies and navies a power 
for order merely, not an instrument of aggression or of 
selfish violence. 

These are American principles, American policies. 
We could stand for no others. And they are also the 
principles and policies of forward looking men and women 
everywhere, of every modern nation, of every enlightened 
community. They are the principles of mankind and 
must prevail. 



FRANCE UNITED IN THE CAUSE OF RIGHT 
Paul Deschanel 

After thirty-one months of the most terrible of wars, 
France is as united as she was on the very first day of 
hostihties. The crime committed by Germany brought 
about this miracle. All Frenchmen to-day have but 
one thought, one ardent desire, and that is to drive out 
the enemy. A German peace would be but a truce for 
more wars in the near future. If we cease the struggle 
to-day, our sons will have to go on with it. 

A few weeks since, a deputy from the invaded regions, 
on coming back to take his seat in the Chamber of Dep- 
uties after an absence of two years and a half, said : 
"They are suffering cruelly there, both in body and soul; 
they are enduring the greatest humiliations; they have 
insufficient food ; yet, full of determination, they cry to 
you saying: 'Whatever you do, make no premature 
peace, no patched-up, no German peace.'" We who 
are free, and far from the struggle, shall we be less de- 
termined, less patient and enduring than they are? 
The noble cry of these our oppressed brothers is heard 
throughout France, even to her remotest hamlet; the 
whole country, from the Alps to the Pyrenees, from the 

In February of 1917, a great meeting of representative French 
Associations was held at the Sorbonne. M. Deschanel was in the 
chair, supported by President Poincare, the members of the Govern- 
ment and of the diplomatic corps. The chairman addressed the meet- 
ing, affirming "the indissoluble union of all Frenchmen in opposing 
German aggression." 

101 



102 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

Ocean to the Front, has risen up in wrath, in pride, 
and hope ! 

We are approaching the most decisive moment of all 
times. This war is the greatest of all wars, not only by 
the length of the battle-line, the power of inventions, the 
number of men and the peoples engaged in it — fourteen 
nations, twenty million men, are wrestling, amidst untold 
horrors — but because all the moral inheritance of man- 
kind is at stake. It is no longer a duel between two 
countries, or two civilizations, Greece and Persia, Rome 
and Carthage ; it is a struggle between the just and the 
unjust, between honor and perjury, between right and 
crime. The morality of the universe itself is at stake. 

Germany had guaranteed the independence and neu- 
trality of Belgium ; she called upon this country to allow 
her a passage through her land in order to attack France ; 
Belgium refused, and Germany ruthlessly fell upon her 
and slew her. Germany has, before God, before man, 
and before the ages tb come, stained herself forever with 
the blood of innocent Belgium. If such a crime should 
triumph, the human race would be degraded. Treaties 
would no longer have any value, nations no security — 
you see that neutral countries are already endangered. 
All moral effort since the human race has existed would 
be annihilated, and man be on a level with the beasts; 
the strongest paw, the sharpest claw, would rule the 
world. The very thought of such a terrible state of 
existence is maddening. Any one who has a heart would 
brave the worst evils rather than sink to such degrada- 
tion. 

Germany would like to assume the domination of the 
world, but by what right? By right of her own supe- 
riority, so she says. And wherein lies this vast superior- 
ity? Is it in her methods of observation which have 



PAUL DESCHANEL 103 

failed? She was mistaken in her judgment of France, 
Belgium, Britain, Russia, Italy, and Japan. She under- 
stands things, but not men, nor their souls, and yet she 
wishes to rule and lead them ! The Germans say : "Our 
enemies want to annihilate us." These are but idle 
words ! A nation of seventy million inhabitants cannot be 
annihilated ; and I suppose that when people talk about 
"destroying Prussian militarism," they don't imagine 
they can change the Prussian character. Prussia is a 
military State and can never be anything else. If she 
had not been such, she would never have existed. It 
would be necessary, too, to overthrow the German uni- 
versity, school, and pulpit, for her army is only the off- 
spring of these. 

No ! we are not pursuing some mere fancy or dream ; 
we do not wish to prevent any one from living, but what 
we do want is that nations may breathe freely and work 
in peace, in independence and dignity. 



AMERICA BREAKS WITH GERMANY 
WooDRow Wilson 

I CANNOT bring myself to believe that the Imperial 
German Government will indeed pay no regard to the 
ancient friendship between their people and our own, or 
to the solemn obligations which have been exchanged be- 
tween them, and will destroy American ships and take the 
lives of American citizens in the wilful prosecution of 
the ruthless naval program they have announced their 
intention to adopt. Only actual overt acts on their part 
can make me believe it even now. 

If this inveterate confidence on my part in the sobriety 
and prudent foresight of their purpose should unhappily 
prove unfounded ; if American ships and American lives 
should in fact be sacrificed by their naval commanders 
in heedless contravention of the just and reasonable under- 
standings of international law and the obvious dictates of 
humanity, I shall take the liberty of coming again before 
the Congress to ask that authority be given me to use 

On February 3, 1917, at two o'clock, the United States, through its 
President, notified the world that it had broken off diplomatic relations 
with the Imperial German Government. As President Wilson entered 
the House, the whole throng rose and cheered him. "Grim faced and 
solemn" he was escorted to his place and began to read the document 
which "was heard round the world." 

Not a sound came from floor or galleries but the clear, calm tones 
of the President, speaking slowly and distinctly. The great assemblage 
of legislators and notables listened with the closest attention to words 
which recorded "one of the somber moments of American and world 
history." 

104 



WOODROW WILSON 105 

any means that may be necessary for the protection of 
our seamen and our people in the prosecution of their 
peaceful and legitimate errands on the high seas. I can 
do nothing less. I take it for granted that all neutral 
governments will take the same course. 

We do not desire any hostile conflict with the Imperial 
German Government. We are the sincere friends of the 
German people and earnestly desire to remain at peace 
with the government which speaks for them. We shall 
not believe that they are hostile to us unless and until we 
are obliged to believe it; and we purpose nothing more 
than the reasonable defense of the undoubted rights of 
our people. 

We wish to serve no selfish ends. We seek merely to 
stand true alike in thought and in action to the imme- 
morial principles of our people which I sought to ex- 
press in my address to the Senate only two weeks ago 
— seek merely to vindicate our right to liberty and jus- 
tice and an unmolested life. 

These are the bases of peace, not war. God grant 
that we may not be challenged to defend them by acts 
of wilful injustice on the part of the government of 
Germany. 



DEMOCRACY AND THE WAR 
Albert Thomas 

When celebrating the birthday anniversary of the 
first president of the United States, the Government of 
this RepubHc not only performs a duty of international 
courtesy, but it conveys the homage of grateful France 
to one of her noblest citizens. Upon the threshold of 
the history of our two Democracies stands a warlike 
hero whose image is almost as familiar to French school- 
boys as it is to American children ; he is the stubborn 
fighter of Valley Forge, the victor at Yorktown : General 
Washington, who was appointed by Congress *'to com- 
mand all the Continental forces, raised, or to be raised, 
for the defense of American liberty." 

It is the nobleness of wars inspired by a democratic 
ideal, which arouses beyond the seas the enthusiasm of 
free races. They are wars of sentiment, but they are also 
wars of determination and will. 

When material interests or dynastic ambitions are at 
stake, governments wearied of a conflict may be led to 
compromise matters, but nations like ours never grow 
weary of defending their liberty. 

Washington's ideal was that the long war he had waged 
should assure peace and prosperity to the United States 

At the ceremony held in Paris on the anniversary of George Wash- 
ington's birthday, February 22, 1917, M. Albert Thomas, Minister of 
Munitions, called to remembrance the ideals by which the sister democ- 
racies were actuated, and paid homage in eloquent terms to the memory 
of our first President, "upon whom, in 1793, the Legislative Assembly 
had bestowed the title of French Citizen." 

106 



ALBERT THOMAS 107 

forever, and that the Union should serve as a model and 
example to less privileged countries, still slaves to tradi- 
tion, "It would be worthy of a free and enlightened 
nation, soon to become a great one, to give humanity the 
magnanimous and novel example of a race always guided 
by the high principles of justice and generosity." 

We know these same motives inspire President Wilson, 
for in his address to the Senate he said: "America has 
entertained from her birth the lofty and honorable expec- 
tation of being able to point out to Humanity, by her 
manner of being and doing, the path that leads to Liberty." 

But in order to remain true to this ideal of liberty and 
peace, America has gradually been compelled to abandon 
the isolation recommended by Washington at a time when 
the history of the world was little more than the history 
of Europe. 

President Wilson now desires the Monroe Doctrine to 
be applied to the whole universe, saying : 

"I suggest that the different nations should agree to 
adopt the Monroe Doctrine as the doctrine of the world ; 
that no nation should seek to impose its policy upon any 
other country, but that each race should be free to deter- 
mine its own particular policy, to choose its own way of 
development, without anything to hinder, molest, or dis- 
may it, in such a manner that we may see the small 
country prospering by the side of the great and powerful 
one." 

These ideas, though familiar to Frenchmen, seem 
to-day both daring and ancient. They are ancient, for 
in the hope of bringing back human society to a state of 
natural kindness and perpetual peace, we cannot fail to 
find again the spirit of our revolutionary ancestors! 
They are daring ideas, because the last half-century of 
European history, and these thirty months' war, have 



108 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

compelled us to acknowledge that the way towards that 
Golden Age is long and that all the nations would not 
tread the same path and keep step with us ! But, gentle- 
men, what a comfort it is to our people to feel that your 
country is also considering the stages that have to be 
traveled over ! 

It is not by mere chance that the words which most 
clearly define the spirit of France at war were uttered 
by the most illustrious representatives of American 
democracy : Washington and Lincoln. 

Remember the exhortation given at the consecration 
of Gettysburg cemetery: ''Let us resolve that these 
men shall not have died in vain, so that the nation may, 
by the help of God, be restored to hberty, and that gov- 
ernment of the people, by the people, and for the people 
shall not perish from the earth." 

These striking words make an echo, more than two 
thousand years after, to the funeral oration uttered by 
Pericles in honor of the warriors who had died to save 
Athens. They bear an untold weight of meaning for 
France, who is determined to fight to the finish for her 
liberty, for they are a pledge of faith in an undying 
democracy. 



THE PRESIDENT'S WAR MESSAGE 
WooDRow Wilson 

We are now about to accept the gauge of battle with 
the Imperial German Government, this natural foe to 
liberty, and shall, ' if necessary, spend the whole force of 
the nation to check and nullify its pretensions and its 
power. We are glad, now that we see the facts with no 
veil of false pretense about them, to fight thus for the 
ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its 
peoples, the German peoples included ; for the rights of 
nations great and small, and the privilege of men every- 
where to choose their way of life and of obedience. 

The world must be made safe for democracy. Its 
peace must be planted upon the trusted foundation of 
political liberty. 

We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no con- 
quest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for our- 

In an address even "more memorable" than his speech on the occa- 
sion of the breaking off of diplomatic relations with Germany, President 
Wilson outlined his reason for declaring that war existed between the 
United States and the Imperial German Government. In the late 
hours of the evening of April 2, 1917, he appeared before the 65th Con- 
gress, in special session assembled, and delivered this new Declaration 
of Rights. The editors of our newspapers have been practically unani- 
mous in declaring this one of the greatest of our state documents. 

Mr. Gilbert K. Chesterton, in commenting on this speech, said that 
Mr. Wilson was "truly and worthily the orator of the human race. 
The simple words with which he ended are among the sort of historic 
sayings that can be graven on stone. 'God helping her she can do no 
other.' That is the answer of humanity to all possible preaching about 
the inhumanity of war, to the most that can be said, to the worst that 
can be endured." 

109 



110 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

selves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we 
shall freely make. 

We are but one of the champions of the rights of man- 
kind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been 
made as secure as the faith and the freedom of the nations 
can make them. 

Just because we fight without rancor and without self- 
ish objects, seeking nothing for ourselves but what we 
shall wish to share as free peoples, we shall, I feel confident, 
conduct our operations as belligerents without passion, 
and ourselves observe with proud punctilio the principles 
of right and of fair play we profess to be fighting for. 

It will be all the easier for us to conduct ourselves as 
belligerents in a high spirit of right and fairness because 
we act without animus, not in enmity towards a people 
or with the desire to bring any injury or disadvantage 
upon them, but only in armed opposition to an irrespon- 
sible government, which has thrown aside all consider- 
ations of humanity and of right and is running amuck. 

We shall, happily, still have an opportunity to prove 
our friendship in our daily attitude and actions towards 
the millions of men and women of German birth and 
native sympathy who live amongst us and share our life, 
and we shall be proud to prove it towards all who are in 
fact loyal to their neighbors and to the government in 
the hour of test. They are, most of them, as true and 
loyal Americans as if they had never known any other 
fealty or allegiance. They will be prompt to stand with 
us in rebuking and restraining the few who may be of a 
different mind and purpose. If there should be dis- 
loyalty it will be dealt with with a firm hand of stern 
repression ; but if it lifts its head at all it will lift it only 
here and there and without countenance except from a 
lawless and malignant few. 



WOODROW WILSON 111 

Gentlemen of the congress, it is a distressing and op- 
pressive duty which I have performed in thus addressing 
you. There are, it may be, many months of fiery trial 
and sacrifice ahead of us. It is a fearful thing to lead 
this great peaceful people into war, into the most ter- 
rible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming 
to be in the balance. 

But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall 
fight for the things which we have always carried nearest 
our hearts, — for democracy, for the right of those who 
submit to authority to have a voice in their own govern- 
ments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a 
universal dominion of right by such a concert of free 
peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and 
make the world itself at last free. 

To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our for- 
tunes, everything that we are and everything that we 
have, with the pride of those who know that the day has 
come when America is privileged to spend her blood and 
her might for the principles that gave her birth and hap- 
piness and the peace which she has treasured. God help- 
ing her, she can do no other. 



FRANCE CONGRATULATES AMERICA 
Raymond Poincare 

At the moment when, under the generous inspiration 
of yourself, the great American republic, faithful to its 
ideals and traditions, is coming forward to defend with 
the force of arms the cause of justice and liberty, the 
people of France are filled with the deepest feelings of 
brotherly appreciation. 

Permit me again to give you, Mr. President, in this 
solemn and grave hour, an assurance of the same senti- 
ments of which I recently gave you evidence, sentiments, 
which under the present circumstances have grown in 
depth and warmth. 

I am conjEident that I voice the thought of all France 
in expressing to you and to the American nation the 
joy and pride which we feel to-day as our hearts again 
beat in unison with yours. 

This war would not have reached its final import had 
not the United States been led by the enemy himself to 
take part in it. To every impartial spirit it will ' be 
apparent, in the future more than ever in the past, that 
German imperialism, which desired, prepared and de- 
clared this war, had conceived the mad dream of estab- 
lishing its hegemony throughout the world. It has suc- 
ceeded only in bringing about a revolt of the conscience 
of humanity. 

This message was cabled on April 5, 1917, by President Poincar6 to 
President Wilson. 

112 



RAYMOND POINCARfi 113 

In never-to-be-forgotten language you have made 
yourself, before the universe, the eloquent interpreter of 
outraged laws and a menaced civilization. 

Honor to you, Mr. President, and to your noble coun- 
try. I beg you to believe in my devoted friendship. 



MESSAGE TO AMERICA 
David Lloyd George 

America has in one bound become a world power in a 
sense never before. America waited until she found a 
cause worthy of her traditions. 

The American people held back until they were fully 
convinced the fight was not a sordid scrimmage for power 
and possessions, but an unselfish struggle to overthrow 
sinister conspiracy against human liberty and human 
rights. 

Once that conviction was reached, the great republic 
of the west has leaped into the arena and stands now side 
by side with the European democracies, who, bruised and 
bleeding after three years of grim conflict, are still fight- 
ing the most savage foe that ever menaced the freedom of 
the world. 

The glowing phrases of the President's noble deliver- 
ance will illumine the horizon and make clearer than ever 
the goal we are striving to reach. 

There are two phrases which will stand out forever in 
the story of this crusade, — first, "that the world must 
be made safe for democracy" — next, that "the menace 
to peace and freedom lies in the existence of autocratic 
governments backed by organized force and controlled 
wholly by their will and not by the will of their people." 

On April 6, 1917, Lloyd George, speaking for the Cabinet, and "all 
the people and all the nations of the British Empire," commended 
America on her stand in entering the world war. 

114 



DAVID LLOYD GEORGE 115 

These words represent the faith which inspires and 
sustains our people in the tremendous sacrifices they have 
made and are still making. 

They also believe the unity of peace maintained can 
only rest upon democracy, upon the rights of those who 
submit to authority to have a voice in their government ; 
upon the respect for the rights and liberties of nations 
both great and small, and upon universal dominion of the 
public right. 

To all these the Prussian military autocracy is an im- 
placable foe. 

The Imperial war cabinet, representing all the people 
and all the nations of the British empire, wish me in their 
behalf to recognize the chivalry and courage which calls 
the people of the United States to dedicate the whole of 
their resources and service to the greatest cause that ever 
engaged human endeavor. 



GREETINGS FROM A SISTER REPUBLIC 
M. RiBOT AND M, Deschanel 

M. RiBOT 

You have heard the admirable message of President 
Wilson. We all feel that something important, some- 
thing which exceeds the proportions of a pohtical event, 
has been accomplished. 

It is a historic fact of unequaled import — this entry 
into the war on the side of us and our allies of the most 
peaceable democracy in the world. After having done 
everything to affirm its attachment to peace, the great 
American nation declares solemnly that it cannot remain 
neutral in this immense conflict between right and vio- 
lence, between civilization and barbarism. It holds that 
honor requires it to take up the challenge flung at the 
rules of international law so laboriously built up by civ- 
ilized nations. (Applause.) 

But at the same time it declares that it is not fighting 
for self-interest, that it desires neither conquest nor com- 
pensation, that it intends only to help toward a victory 
of the cause of law and liberty. (The deputies rise and 
applaud.) 

The grandeur, the nobility, of this action is enhanced 
by the simplicity and serenity of the language of the illus- 
trious leader of that great democracy. (Applause.) 

These two speeches were made on April 6, 1917, in the French 
Chamber of Deputies. M. Ribot was Minister of Foreign Affairs ; 
M. Deschanel, President of the Chamber. The two speeches were 
widely circulated throughout France by the order of the Government. 

116 



M. RIBOT 117 

If the world had entertained the least doubt of the 
profound meaning of this war in which we are engaged, 
the message of the President of the United States would 
dissipate all obscurity. It makes apparent to all that the 
struggle is verily a struggle between the Uberal spirit of 
modern societies and the spirit of oppression of societies 
still enslaved to military despotism. It is for this reason 
that the message rings in the depths of all hearts like a 
message of deliverance to the world. (Applause.) 

The people who, under the inspiration of the writings 
of our philosophers, declared their rights in the eighteenth 
century, the people who place Washington and Lincoln 
foremost among their heroes, the people who in the last 
century suffered a civil war for the abolition of slavery, 
were indeed worthy to give such an example to the 
world. 

Thus do they remain faithful to the traditions of the 
founders of their independence, and demonstrate that the 
enormous rise of their industrial strength and of their 
economic and financial power has not weakened in them 
that need for an ideal without which there can be no great 
nation. (Applause.) 

What touches us particularly is that the United States 
has held to the friendship which at an earlier time was 
ratified in blood. We bear witness with grateful joy to 
the enduring sympathy between the peoples, which is 
one of the dehcate virtues the bosom of a democracy can 
nourish. 

The Star-spangled Banner and the Tricolor will fly 
side by side; our hands will join; our hearts beat in 
unison. This will mean for us, after so much suffering, 
heroically borne, so many bereavements, so many ruins, 
a renewal of the sentiments which have animated and 
sustained us during this long trial. The powerful, deci- 



118 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

sive aid which the United States brings us is not only a 
material aid ; it will be especially moral aid, a real con- 
solation, (Applause.) 

Seeing the conscience of peoples everywhere in the 
world awake and rise in an immense protest against the 
atrocities of which we are the victims, we feel more keenly 
that we are fighting not only for ourselves and for our 
allies, but for something immortal, and that we are lay- 
ing the foundations of a new order. Thus our sacrifices 
will not have been in vain; the generous blood poured 
out by the sons of France will have fertihzed the seeds 
both of justice and of liberty so fundamentally necessary 
to concord between nations. (Applause.) 

In the name of the whole country, the government of 
the French Republic addresses to the government and 
people of the United States, with the expression of its 
gratitude, its warmest good wishes. (Prolonged cheers.) 

M. Deschanel 

The French Chamber greets with enthusiasm the ver- 
dict of the President of the Republic of the United States, 
and the vigorous decision of the Federal Senate accept- 
ing the war imposed by Germany. 

^schylus says in "The Persians": "When insolence 
takes root, it grows into crime ; the harvest is suffering." 
And we can say: "The growth of the crime brings ven- 
geance ; after the harvest of suffering comes the harvest 
of justice !" (Applause.) 

The cry of the women and children from the depths 
of the abyss where hideous wickedness flung them has 
echoed from one end of the earth to the other. Wash- 
ington and Lincoln trembled in their graves ; their spirit 
has roused America. (Applause.) 



M. DESCHANEL 119 

But is it a question only of avenging Americans? Is 
it a question of punishing only the violation of treaties 
signed by the United States? No; the eternal truths 
proclaimed in the Declaration of 1776, the sacred causes 
which Lafayette and Rochambeau defended, the ideals 
of a pure conscience from which the great Republic was 
born — honor, morality, liberty — these are the supreme 
values which shine in the folds of the Star-spangled 
Banner. (Applause.) 

Descendants of the Puritans of New England, brought 
up on the precepts of the Gospel, who under the eyes of 
God are about to punish the infernal creation of evil, 
falsehood, perjury, assassination, profanation, rape, slav- 
ery, martyrdom, and disasters of every kind ; Catholics 
struck to the heart by curses against their religion, by 
outrages against their cathedrals and statues, reaching a 
climax in the destruction of Louvain and of Rheims ; 
university professors, trustworthy guardians of law and 
learning; industriaHsts of the East and Middle West, 
farmers and agriculturists of the West; workmen and 
artisans, threatened by the torpedoing of vessels, by the 
interruption of commerce, revolted by the insults to their 
national colors — all are arrayed against the mad arro- 
gance which would enslave the earth, the sea, the heavens, 
and the souls of men. (Prolonged applause.) 

At a time when, as in the heroic times of the American 
Revolution, the Americans are to fight with us, let us 
repeat once more : We wish to prevent no one from liv- 
ing, working, and trading freely; but the tyranny of 
Prussia has become a peril for the New World as for the 
Old, for England as for Russia, for Italy as for Austria, 
and for Germany itself. To free the world, by a common 
effort of all democratic peoples, from the yoke of a feudal 
and military caste in order to found peace upon right, 



120 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

is a work of human deliverance and universal good. 
(Applause.) 

In accomplishing, under an administration henceforth 
immortal, the greatest act in its annals since the abolition 
of slavery, the glorious nation whose whole history is but 
a development of the idea of liberty remains true to its 
lofty origin and creates for itself another claim to the 
gratitude of mankind. (Applause.) 

The French Republic, across the ruins of its cities and 
its monuments, devastated without reason or excuse by 
shameful savagery, sends to its beloved sister Republic 
in America the palms of the Marne and the Yser, of Ver- 
dun and the Somme. (Prolonged applause and cheers.) ^ 

J At the close of this speech one of the deputies asked that the two 
speeches which the Chatnber had just heard be issued as proclamations 
and read in the schools of France. There was no opposition and the 
proclamation was ordered. 



AMERICA, A BEACON LIGHT OF PEACE 
Gabriele D'Annunzio 

For the soul of Italy to-day the capitol at Washington 
has become a beacon light. A Roman garland wreathes 
the bust dedicated to the hero whom free men call the 
glorious knight of humanity. 

It is a garland pure as the branch of lilac offered by a 
poet on the bier of Lincoln. It is sacred as the ever flow- 
ering bough "with heart-shaped leaves of rich green." 
It seems as though in this April of passion and tempest 
there reechoes the cry of that April, tense with joy and 
anguish, " 0, captain ! My captain, rise up ! Hear the 
bells. Rise up, for your flag is flung." 

Now the group of stars on the banner of the great 
republic has become a constellation of the spring, like 
Pleiades ; a propitious sign to sailors, armed and unarmed 
alike ; a spiritual token for all nations fighting a righteous 
war. I give the salute of Italy, of the Roman capitol, 
to the capitol at Washington; a salute to the people of 
the union, who now confirm and seal the pledge that lib- 
erty shall be preserved. 

This Italian poet, who is now serving his country in the aviation 
corps, was "overcome with joy" on hearing of the entrance of the 
United States into the world war. This is his message cabled to America 
on Sunday morning, April 8, 1917. 

Gabriele D'Annunzio, poet, novelist, and dramatist, was born in 
Pescara in 1864. He was educated at the College of Prato in Tuscany 
and at the University of Rome. He became a Member of the Italian 
Chamber in 1898. 

121 



122 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

To Italy alone of the allied nations the possibility was 
open of avoiding war and remaining a passive spectator, 
Italy took up arms gladly, less for the reconquest of her 
heritage than for the salvation of all the things which 
symbolize the grandeur of freedom. She armed herself, 
as to-day the American nation is arming herself, for the 
sake of an ideal. The spontaneous act consummated by 
the fellow-countrymen of Washington is a glorious sacri- 
fice on behalf of the hopes of all mankind. 

America has achieved a new birth. She has molded 
for herself a new heart. This is the miracle wrought by 
a righteous war, the miracle that unexpectedly to-day 
we of Italy see performed beyond an ocean dishonored 
by assassins and thieves. 

Our war is not destructive. It is creative. With all 
manner of atrocities, all manner of shameful acts, the 
barbarian has striven to destroy the ideal which, until 
this struggle began, man had of man. The barbarian 
heaped upon the innocent, infamous outrages inspired 
by hate, alternating senile imprudence and brutal stu- 
pidity. The barbarian ground heroism to earth, cast 
down the airy cathedrals where congregated the aspira- 
tions of the eternal soul, burned the seats of wisdom 
decked with the flowers of all the arts; distorted the 
lineaments of Christ, tore off the garments of the Virgin. 

Now once again we begin to have hope of the nobility 
of man. Love's face is radiant, though its eyes are moist 
with tears, for never was love so much beloved. Love 
overflows on all the world like a brook in May. Our 
hearts are not large enough to gather it and to hold it. 

The people of Lincoln, springing to their feet to defend 
the eternal spirit of man, to-day increase immeasurably 
this sum of love opposed to fury, the fury of the barbarian. 

"Ah! Liberty. Let others despair of thee. I will 



GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO 123 

never despair of thee," once cried your rugged poet. 
In this hope your nation arises to-day, in the north, south, 
east, west, to offer your strength, proclaiming our cause 
to be the noblest cause for which men have ever fought. 
You were an enormous and obtuse mass of riches and 
power; now you are transfigured into ardent, active 
spirituality. The roll of your drums drowns out the last 
wail of doubt. 

April 15th is the anniversary of Lincoln's death. From 
his sepulcher there issue again the noble words which 
fell from his lips at Gettysburg, on soil sanctified by the 
blood of brave men. All your states, north, south, east, 
west, hear them. I say to you that "this nation, under 
God, shall have a new birth of freedom." 



AMERICA ENTERS THE WAR 
David Lloyd George 

I AM the last man in the world, knowing for three years 
what our difficulties have been, what our anxieties have 
been, and what our fears have been — I am the last man 
in the world to say that the succor which is given from 
America is not in itself something to rejoice at, and to 
rejoice at greatly. But I also say that I value more the 
knowledge that America is going to win a right to be at 
the conference table when the terms of peace are discussed. 

That conference will settle the destiny of nations and 
the course of human life for God knows how many years. 
It would have been a tragedy, a tragedy for mankind, if 
America had not been there, and there with all her influ- 
ence and her power. 

I can see peace, not a peace to be a beginning of war, 
not a peace which will be an endless preparation for strife 
and bloodshed, but a real peace. The world is an old 
world. You have never had the racking wars that have 
rolled like an ocean over Europe. 

Europe has always lived under the menace of the 
sword. When this war began, two thirds of Europe was 
under autocratic rule. Now it is the other way about, 

Before the American Luncheon Club of London, on April 12, 1917, 
Great Britain's Prime Minister spoke on the entrance of the United 
States into war with Germany. 

Ambassador Page was present and responded for the Club. Hia 
speech follows this one. 

124 



DAVID LLOYD GEORGE 125 

and democracy means peace. The democracy of France 
hesitated ; the democracy of Italy hesitated long before 
it entered ; the democracy of this country sprang back 
with a shudder and would never have entered that cal- 
dron had it not been for the invasion of Belgium ; and if 
Prussia had been a democracy, there would have been 
no war. 

Many strange things have happened in this war, aye, 
and stranger things will come, and they are coming 
rapidly. There are times in history when this world 
spins so leisurely along its destined course that it seems 
for centuries to be at a standstill. There are awful times 
when it rushes along at giddying pace, covering the track 
of centuries in a year. Those are the times we are living 
in now. Six weeks ago Russia was an autocracy. She 
now is one of the most advanced democracies in the 
world. 

To-day we are waging one of the most devastating wars 
that the world has ever seen. To-morrow, to-morrow, 
not perhaps distant to-morrows, war may be abolished 
forever from the category of human crimes. This may 
be something like that fierce outburst of winter which 
we now are witnessing before we complete the time for 
the summer. 

It is written of those gallant men who won that victory 
on Monday, from Canada, from Australia, and from this 
old country — it has proved that in spite of its age it is 
not decrepit — it is written of those gallant men that 
they attacked at dawn. Fitting work for the dawn — to 
drive out of forty miles of French soil those miscreants 
who had defiled her freedom. They attacked with the 
dawn. It is a significant phrase. 

The great nations represented in the struggle for free- 
dom — they are the heralds of dawn. They attacked 



126 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

with dawn, and those men are marching forward in the 
full radiance of that dawn, and soon Frenchmen and 
Americans, British and Russians, aye, Serbians, and Bel- 
gians, Montenegrins, and Roumanians, will emerge into 
the full light of a perfect day. 



GREAT DAYS FOR THE REPUBLIC 

Walter Hines Page 

These are great days for the republic. We have set 
out to help in an enterprise of saving the earth as a place 
worth living in. 

There is no need to restate the meaning of this enter- 
prise to you. What is new about it is that it now becomes 
our immediate American enterprise. The clear, solemn 
call of the President and the voice of Congress, which 
is the voice of the people, are to us the high call of duty. 
If there be an American in this room who has not volun- 
teered to give any service that he can without thought of 
consequence or of pay, I don't see him. 

From all of the states, from the states of the great 
Mississippi valley, from the South and from the Pacific, 
they will come, as many millions as need be. You are 
parts also of our great industrial organizations and finan- 
cial institutions, and these, too, already are at the service 
of our government. We shall not have to do any com- 
mandeering. 

Ambassador Page, representing the American Luncheon Club of 
London, made fitting reply to the words of Lloyd George in commending 
America on her newly taken stand on the side of the Allies. 

Walter Hines Page is a North Carolinian by birth, having been born 
in that state on the 15th day of August, 1855. Mr. Page is well edu- 
cated, having attended Randolph Macon College, and Tulane, Aberdeen 
(Scotland), and Johns Hopkins Universities. He became editor of 
The Forum in 1890, and of the Atlantic. Monthly in 1896. He was editor 
of the World's Work when he was selected by President Wilson in 1913 
to represent American interests at the Court of St. James. 

127 



128 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

For the first time we are coming to war in the old 
world — except, indeed, when once before we came 
thither to suppress the Barbary pirates. It is singular 
that our present errand is so similar. 

Of our coming overseas many consequences will follow. 
First and foremost we trust for an earlier victory, and, 
secondly, for a better understanding of the United States 
by the free nations of Europe and of the free nations of 
Europe by the United States, and this, as I see it, is the 
largest constructive political need of the world. 

We come in answer only to the high call of duty and 
not for any material reward ; not for territory, not for 
indemnity or conquest, not for anything save the high 
duty to succor democracy when it is desperately assailed. 
We come only for the ideal ; that is, the republic. 

What is the United States? It is a vast territory of 
great resources and a hundred million prosperous people, 
yes, but more. The republic is a system of society, a 
scheme of life, a plan of freedom, a state of mind — an 
ideal that every human shall have the utmost possible 
opportunity for individual development and that noth- 
ing shall be put in the way of that development. It was 
for this and upon this that our fathers established it. 
This we haven't forgotten, nor shall we ever forget. It is 
to make sure that this ideal shall not now perish from the 
earth that brings the United States into this war. High 
as the cost and great as the toll may be, we shall be better 
for standing where we have always stood, whatever the 
cost. 



COMRADES IN A COMMON CAUSE 
Bishop Brent 

We comrades in the common cause have come together 
like sturdy Judas Maccabseus and his fellow patriots in 
the ancient story, to commit our decision to the Lord and 
place ourselves in His hands before we pitch our camp 
and go forth to battle. It were an unworthy cause that 
we could not commit to God with complete confidence. 
To-day we have this confidence. 

This, I venture to say, is not merely the beginning of 
a new era, but of a new epoch. At this moment a great 
nation well skilled in self-sacrifice, is standing by with 
deep sympathy and bidding Godspeed to another great 
nation that is making its act of self-dedication to God. 
That altar upon which we Americans are to-day laying 

On April 20, 1917, the British Government and people celebrated 
the entry of America into the world war. A historic service was held 
in St. Paul's Cathedral, London. The cathedral seats nearly 400 
people and was filled to its farthest recesses, when King George and 
Queen Mary entered, followed by the mayors and aldermen of the 
twenty-six boroughs of London, wearing their scarlet robes of office. 

The king and queen and Princess Mary were received at the west 
entrance by the lord mayor and sheriff, the archbishop of Canterbury, 
the dean and chapter of St. Paul's, and the United States ambassador, 
Walter Hines Page. 

The American embassy and consular staffs occupied front seats with 
representatives of the Pilgrims, the American Society, the American 
Luncheon Club, and the American Chamber of Commerce. In the diplo- 
matic section were officers in the uniforms of France, Russia, Italy, 
Belgium, Serbia, Montenegro, Roumania, and Japan. 

The most impressive feature of the service came when the band 
played a stanza of "The Star-spangled Banner" and the great crowd 
rose as one man. 

The sermon here given was preached by Bishop Brent, Episcopal 
bishop of the Philippines, from the text in Maccabees II. 13 ending, 
" having given out to his men the watchword, ' Victory is God's.' " 

129 



130 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

our lives and our fortunes is already occupied. After three 
years Great Britain and her allies have been fighting not 
merely for their own laws, their own homes, their liberty, 
and all they hold sacred, but for the great commonwealth 
of mankind. 

To-day, when the United States avow their intention 
of giving themselves wholeheartedly to this great cause, 
the battle for the right assumes new proportions. A 
new power and victory — aye, a victory that is God's — 
is in sight. We Americans have never been oblivious to 
the fact that the people of this country have been stand- 
ing for the same principles which we love and for which 
we live. England, thank God, is the mother of democ- 
racy, and England's children come back to-day to pour all 
their experience, the experience of a century and a half of 
independent life, with gratitude at the feet of their mother. 

To-day we stand side by side with our fellows as com- 
mon soldiers in the common fight. There have been 
great quarrels in the past that were results of misunder- 
standing, but our quarrel with Germany is not based on 
misunderstanding. It is due to understanding. Just 
as it was understanding that made us break with Ger- 
many, so it is understanding which makes us take our 
place by the side of the AlHes. It would have been im- 
possible for us to do otherwise. 

This act of America has enabled her to find her soul. 
America, which stands for democracy, must champion the 
cause of the plain people at all costs. The plain people 
most desire peace. That is what America with the Allies 
is fighting for. She thinks so much of peace that she is 
ready to pay the cost of war. Our war to-day is that we 
may destroy war. One thing to do with war is to hunt 
it to its death and, please God, in this war we shall achieve 
our purpose. 



FRANCE GIVES YOU GREETING 
Rene Viviani 

I AM indeed happy to have been chosen to present the 
greetings of the French Republic to the illustrious man 
whose name is in every French mouth to-day, whose 
incomparable message is at this very hour being read 
and commented upon in all our schools as the most per- 
fect charter of human rights, and which so fully expresses 
the virtues of your race — long-suffering patience before 
appealing to force, and force to avenge that long-suffer- 
ing patience when there can be no other means. 

Since you are here to listen to me, I ask you to repeat 
a thousandfold the expression of our deep gratitude for 
the enthusiastic reception the American people have 
granted us in Washington. It is not to us, but to our 
beloved and heroic France, that reception was accorded. 
We were proud to be her children in those unforgetable 
moments when we read in the radiance of the faces we 
saw, the noble sincerity of your hearts. And I desire to 
thank also the press of the United States, represented by 
you. I fully realize the ardent and disinterested help 
you have given by your tireless propaganda in the cause 
of right. I know your action has been incalculable. 
Gentlemen, I thank you. 

We have come to this land to salute the American 

Soon after his arrival in America, April 27, 1917, as head of the 
French Government's Commission, M. Viviani gave this statement to 
newspaper men. 

131 



132 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

people and its Government, to call to fresh vigor our life- 
long friendship, sweet and cordial in the ordinary course 
of our lives, and which these tragic hours have raised to 
all the ardor of brotherly love — a brotherly love which 
in these last years of suffering has multiplied its most 
touching expressions. You have given help not only in 
treasure, in every act of kindness and good will, but for 
us your children have shed their blood, and the names of 
your sacred dead are inscribed forever in our hearts. 
And it was with a full knowledge of the meaning of what 
you did that you acted. Your inexhaustible generosity 
was not the charity of the fortunate to the distressed, 
it was an affirmation of your conscience, a reasoned ap- 
proval of your judgment. 

Your fellow-countrymen knew that under the savage 
assault of a nation of prey which has made of war, to 
quote a famous saying, its national industry, we were 
upholding with our incomparable allies — faithful and 
valiant to the death, with all those who are fighting 
shoulder to shoulder with us on the firing line, the sons of 
indomitable England — a struggle for the violated rights of 
man, for that democratic spirit which the forces of au- 
tocracy were attempting to crush throughout the world. 
We are ready to carry that struggle on to the end. 

And now, as President Wilson has said, the Republic 
of the United States rises in its strength as a champion 
of right and rallies to the side of France and her allies. 
Only our descendants, when time has removed them suffi- 
ciently far from present events, will be able to measure 
the full significance, the grandeur of an historic act which 
has sent a thrill through the whole world. From to-day 
on all the forces of freedom are let loose. And not only 
victory, of which we were already assured, is certain; 
the true meaning of victory is made manifest. It can- 



RENfi VIVIANI 133 

not be merely a fortunate military conclusion to this 
struggle ; it will be the victory of morahty and right, and 
will forever secure the existence of a world in which all 
our children shall draw free breath in full peace and un- 
disturbed pursuit of their labors. 



THE FLAG ON THE FIRING LINE 
Theodore Roosevelt 

I come here to-night to appeal to the people of the 
great west, the people of the Mississippi valley, the 
people who are the spiritual heirs of the men who stood 
behind Lincoln and Grant. 

You men and women who live beside the Great Lakes 
and on the lands drained by the Ohio, the Mississippi, 
and the Missouri have always represented what is most 
intensely American in our national life. When once 
waked up to actual conditions you have always stood 
with unfaltering courage and iron endurance for the 
national honor and the national interest. 

I appeal to the sons and daughters of the men and 
women of the Civil War, to the grandsons and grand- 
daughters of the pioneers; I appeal to the women as 
much as to the men, for our nation has risen level to every 
great crisis only because in every such crisis the courage 
of its women flamed as high as the courage of the men. 

I appeal to you to take the lead in making good the 
President's message of the 2nd of this month, in which he 

Mr. Roosevelt delivered this speech to a crowd of some thirteen 
thousand people at the Chicago Stockyards Pavilion, when he visited 
that city on April 28, 1917, in the interest of the preparedness cause. 

Former President Roosevelt was born in New York, October 27, 
1858. After graduating from Harvard, he entered politics and was 
elected to the State Legislature in 1882. In 1898 he was the popular 
choice for governor in the Empire state. He was elected to the Vice 
Presidency of the United States under McKinley and after his (Mc- 
Kinley's) assassination on September 14, 1901, succeeded to the Presi- 
dency. Mr. Roosevelt was again made President in 1904. 

134 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT 135 

set forth the reasons why it was our unescapable duty to 
make war upon Germany. It rests with us — with the 
American people — to make that message one of the 
great state documents of our history. 

Let us accept the lessons it teaches. Let us grasp 
what it says as to the frightful wrongs Germany has com- 
mitted upon us and upon the weaker nations of mankind, 
and the damage she has wrought to the whole fabric of 
civilization and of international good faith and morality. 

Then let us steel our hearts and gird our loins to show 
that we are fit to stand among the free people whose 
freedom is buttressed by their self-reliant strength. Let 
us show by our deeds that we are fit to be the heirs of 
the men who founded the republic, and of the men who 
saved the republic; of the continentals who followed 
Washington, and of the men who wore the blue under 
Grant and the gray under Lee. 

But, mind you, the message, the speech, will amount 
to nothing unless we make it good ; and it can be made 
good only by the high valor of our fighting men, and by 
the resourceful and laborious energy of the men and 
women who, with deeds, not merely words, back up the 
fighting men. 

We read the Declaration of Independence every Fourth 
of July because, and only because, the soldiers of Wash- 
ington made that message good by their blood during 
the weary years of war that followed. If, after writing 
the Declaration of Independence, the men of '76 had 
failed with their bodies to make it good, it would be read 
now only with contempt and derision. 

Our children still learn how Patrick Henry spoke for 
the heart of the American people when he said, "Give 
me liberty or give me death," but this generation is 
thrilled by his words only because the Americans of those 



136 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

days showed in very fact that they were ready to accept 
death rather than lose their Hberty. 

In Lincoln's deathless Gettysburg speech and second 
inaugural he solemnly pledged the honor of the American 
people to the hard and perilous task of preserving the 
union and freeing the slaves. 

The pledge was kept. The American people fought 
to a finish the war which saved the union and freed the 
slave. If Lincoln and the men and women behind him 
had wavered, if they had grown faint-hearted and had 
shrunk from the fight, or had merely paid others to fight 
for them, they would have earned for themselves and for 
us the scorn of the nations of mankind. 

The words of Lincoln will live forever only because 
they were made good by the deeds of the fighting men. 

So it is now. We can make the President's message 
of April 2nd stand among the great state papers in our his- 
tory ; but we can do so only if we make the message good ; 
and we can make it good only if we fight with all our 
strength now, at once ; if at the earliest possible moment 
we put the flag on the firing line and keep it there, over 
a constantly growing army, until the war closes by a 
peace which brings victory to the great cause of democ- 
racy and civilization, the great cause of justice and fair 
play among the peoples of the world. 



THE RIGHTS OF MANKIND 
Theodore Roosevelt 

We fight for our own rights. We fight for the rights 
of mankind. This great struggle is fundamentally a 
struggle for the fundamentals of civilization and democ- 
racy. The future of the free institutions of the world is 
at stake. The free people who govern themselves are 
lined up against the governments which deny freedom to 
their people. 

Our cause is the cause of humanity. But we also have 
bitter wrongs of our own which it is our duty to redress. 
Our women and children and unarmed men, going about 
their peaceful business, have been murdered on the high 
seas, not once, but again and again and again. 

With brutal insolence, after having for well-nigh two 
years persevered in this policy, Germany has announced 
that she will continue it, at our expense and at the ex- 
pense of other neutrals, more ruthlessly than ever. 

The injury thus done to us as a nation is as great as 
the injury done to a man if a ruffian slaps his wife's face. 
In such case, if the man is a man, he does not wait and hire 
somebody else to fight for him ; and it would be an evil 
thing, a lasting calamity to this country, if the war ended, 
and found us merely preparing an army in safety at home, 
without having sent a man to the firing line ; merely hav- 
ing paid some billions of dollars to other people so that 
with the bodies of their sons and brothers they might keep 
us in safety. 

From a speech delivered in Chicago, April 28, 1917. 
137 



138 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

I ask that we send a fighting force over to the fighting 
line at the earhest possible moment, and I ask it in the 
name of our children and our children's children, so that 
they may hold their heads high over the memory of what 
this nation did in the world's great crisis. 

I ask it for reasons of national morality no less than 
for our material self-interest. I ask it for the sake of 
our self-respect, our self-esteem. 

Our children will have to read the history of what we 
have done during this war. Let us make the chapter that 
yet remains to be written one that our children shall read 
with pride ; and they will read it only with a feeling of 
self-abasement, unless they read that in the times that 
tried men's souls we have shown valor and endurance 
and proud indifference to life when the honor of the flag 
and the welfare of mankind were at stake. 

Put the flag on the firing line, and valiant men behind 
it ; and keep it there, sending over a constantly growing 
stream of valiant men to aid those who have first gone. 

In the Civil War there were many men who went to 
the front to pay with their bodies for the high faith of 
their souls. There were some men who hired others to 
go as substitutes to the front. Which ones among these 
men are the ones to whom we look back with pride — 
those who faced the bullets or those who paid with dol- 
lars to buy the willingness and ability of other men to 
fight? There is no need to answer. 

In exactly the same way there should be no need to 
answer now the question as to whether we are merely to 
spend biUions of dollars to help others fight, or to stand in 
the fighting line ourselves. 

By all means spend the money. A prime essential is 
to furnish the Allies all the cargo ships they need for food 
and all the craft they need to help hunt down the sub- 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT 139 

marines. By all means aid them with food and ships 
and money, and speedily ; but do not stop there. 

Show that we can fight, as well as furnish dollars and 
vegetables to fighting men. At the earliest possible 
moment send an expeditionary force abroad, show our 
German foes and our allied friends that we are in this 
war in deadly earnest, that we have put the flag on the 
firing line, and that we shall steadily increase the force 
behind that flag to any limit necessary in order to bring 
the peace of victory in this great contest for democracy, 
for civilization, and for the rights of free peoples. 



AT THE TOMB OF WASHINGTON 

M. ViviANi AND Mr. Balfour 

Rene Viviani 

We could not remain longer in Washington without 
accomplishing this pious pilgrimage. In this spot lies 
all that is mortal of a great hero. Close by this spot is 
the modest abode where Washington rested after the 
tremendous labor of achieving for a nation its emanci- 
pation. In this spot meet the admiration of the whole 
world and the veneration of the American people. In 
this spot rise before us the glorious memories left by the 
soldiers of France, led by Rochambeau and Lafayette; 
a descendant of the latter, my friend M. Chambrun, 
accompanies us. I esteem it an honor as well as satisfac- 
tion for my conscience to be entitled to render this 
homage to our ancestors in the presence of my colleague 
and friend, Mr. Balfour, who so nobly represents his 

On April 30, 1917, representatives of the three great democracies 
paid homage to America's soldier and statesman at the tomb of Wash- 
ington, and pledged themselves, each to the other, in the name of the 
dead to prosecute the present mighty struggle against autocracy on the 
lines he himself had followed in bringing America into being. 

The British laid upon the tomb a wreath bearing the inscription 
given at the end of Mr. Balfour's peech. 

A bronze palm such as France gives to her soldier dead was laid on 
the tomb by French privates, and General Joffre, the hero of the Marne, 
said, "In the French Army all venerate the name and memory of Wash- 
ington. I respectfully salute here the great soldier and lay upon his 
tomb the palm we offer our soldiers who have died for their country." 

M. Viviani, Minister of Justice and former premier of France, ad- 
vanced before the tomb and delivered this address. 

140 



RENE VIVIANI 141 

great nation. By thus coming to lay here the respectful 
tribute of every English mind, he shows in this historic 
moment of communion, what France has willed, what 
nations that live for liberty can do. 

When we contemplate in the distant past the luminous 
presence of Washington, in nearer times the majestic 
figure of Abraham Lincoln, when we respectfully salute 
President Wilson, the worthy heir of these great mem- 
ories, we at one glance measure the vast career of the 
American people. It is because the American people 
proclaimed and won for the nation the right to govern 
itself; it is because it proclaimed and won the equality 
of all men, that the free American people at the hour 
marked by fate has been enabled with commanding force 
to carry its action beyond the seas ; it is because it was 
resolved to extend its action still further that Congress 
was enabled to obtain, within the space of a few days, the 
vote of conscription, and to proclaim the necessity for a 
national army in the full splendor of civil peace. 

In the name of France, I salute the young army which 
will share in our common glory. 

While paying this supreme tribute to the memory of 
Washington, I do not diminish the effect of my words 
when I turn my thoughts to the memory of so many un- 
named heroes. I ask you before this tomb to bow, in 
. earnest meditation and all the fervor of piety, before all 
the soldiers of the aUied nations who for nearly three 
years have been fighting under different flags for the same 
ideal. I beg you to address the homage of your hearts 
and souls to all the heroes, born to five in happiness, in 
the tranquil pursuit of their labors, in the enjoyment of 
all human affections, who went into battle with virile 
cheerfulness, and gave themselves up, not to death alone, 
but to the eternal silence that closes over those whose 



142 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

sacrifice remains unnamed, in the full knowledge that 
save for these who loved them their names would disap- 
pear with their bodies. Their monument is in our hearts. 
Not the living alone greet us here ; the ranks of the dead 
themselves rise to surround the soldiers of liberty. 

At this solemn hour in the history of the world, while 
saluting from this sacred mound the final victory of jus- 
tice, I extend to the republic of the United States the 
greeting of the French republic. 

Mr. Balfour 

M. Viviani has expressed in most eloquent words the 
feelings which grip us all here to-day. He has not only 
paid a fitting .tribute to a great statesman, but he has 
brought our thoughts most vividly down to the present. 
The thousands who have given their lives, French, Rus- 
sian, Italian, Belgian, Serbian, Montenegrin, Roumanian, 
Japanese, and British, were fighting for what they believed 
to be the cause of liberty. 

There is no place in the world where a speech for the 
cause of liberty would be better placed than here at the 
tomb of Washington. But as that work has been so 
adequately done by a master of oratory, perhaps you will 
permit me to read a few words prepared by the British 
mission for the wreath we are to leave here to-day. 

"Dedicated by the British mission to the immortal 
memory of George Washington, soldier, statesman, patriot, 
who would have rejoiced to see the country of which he 
was by birth a citizen and the country which his genius 
called into existence, fighting side by side to save man- 
kind from subjection to a military despotism." 



OUR HERITAGE OF LIBERTY 
Rene Viviani 

Since I have been granted the supreme honor of speak- 
ing before the representatives of the American people, 
may I ask them first to allow me to thank this magnificent 
Capital for the welcome it has accorded us ? Accustomed 
as we are in our own free land to popular manifestations, 
and though we had been warned by your fellow-country- 
men who live in Paris of the enthusiasm burning in your 
hearts, we are still full of the emotion raised by the sights 
that awaited us. 

I shall never cease to see the proud and stalwart men 
who saluted our passage ; your women, whose grace 
adds fresh beauty to your city, their arms outstretched, 
full of flowers ; and your children hurrying to meet us as 
if our coming were looked upon as a lesson for them — 
all with one accord acclaiming in our perishable persons 
immortal France. 

And I predict there will be a yet grander manifestation 
on the day when your illustrious President, relieved from 
the burden of power, will come among us bearing the 
salute of the Republic of the United States to a free 
Europe, whose foundations from end to end shall be 
based on right. 

It is with unspeakable emotion that we crossed the 
threshold of this legislative palace, where prudence and 

This address was given before the United States Senate on May 1, 
1917. 

143 



144 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

boldness meet, and that I address you, the first foreigner 
in the annals of America to speak in this hall which only a 
few days since resounded with the words of virile force. 

You have set all the democracies of the world the 
most magnificent example. So soon as the common 
peril was made manifest to you, with simplicity and 
within a few short days you voted a formidable war credit 
and proclaimed that a formidable army was to be raised. 
President Wilson's commentary on his acts, which you 
made yours, remains in the history of free peoples the 
weightiest of lessons. 

Doubtless you were resolved to avenge the insults 
offered your flag, which the whole world respected; 
doubtless through the thickness of these massive walls 
the mournful cry of all the victims that criminal hands 
hurled into the depths of the sea has reached and stirred 
your souls ; but it will be your honor in history that you 
also heard the cry of humanity and invoked against 
autocracy the right of democracies. 

And I can only wonder as I speak what, if they still 
have any power to think, are the thoughts of the auto- 
crats who three years ago against us, three months ago 
against you, unchained this conflict. 

Ah! doubtless they said among themselves that a 
democracy is an ideal government; that it showers re- 
forms on mankind ; that it can in the domain of labor 
quicken all economic activities, but that it cannot make 
war. And yet now we see the French Republic fighting 
in defense of its territory and the liberty of nations and 
opposing to the avalanche let loose by Prussian militarism 
the union of all its children, who are still capable of strik- 
ing many a weighty blow. 

And now we see England, far removed like you from 
conscription, who has also, by virtue of a discipline all 



RENfi VIVIANI 145 

accept, raised from her soil millions of fighting men. 
And we see other nations accomplishing the same act; 
and that liberty not only inflames all hearts, but co- 
ordinates and brings into being all needed efforts. 

And now we see all America rise in the midst of peace 
and sharpen her weapons for the common struggle. 

Together we will carry on that struggle, and when 
by force we have at last imposed military victory, our 
labors will not be concluded. Our task will be — I 
quote the noble words of President Wilson — to organize 
the society of nations. 

I well know that our enemies, who have never seen 
before them anything but horizons of carnage, will never 
cease to jeer at so noble a design. Such has always been 
the fate of great ideas at their birth ; and if thinkers and 
men of action had allowed themselves to be discouraged 
by skeptics, mankind would still be in its infancy and we 
should still be slaves. After material victory we will 
win this moral victory. 

We will shatter the ponderous sword of militarism; 
we will establish guaranties for peace; and then we can 
disappear from the world's stage, since we shall leave, at 
the cost of our common sacrifice, the noblest heritage 
future generations can possess. 



THE OLDEST FREE ASSEMBLIES 
Arthur James Balfour 

Will you permit me on behalf of my friends and myself 
to offer you my deepest and sincerest thanks for the rare 
and valued honor which you have done us by receiving 
us here to-day? We all feel the greatness of the honor, 
but I think to none of us can it come home so closely as 
to one who, like myself, has been for forty-three years 
in the service of a free assembly like your own. 

I rejoice to think that a member, a very old member, 
I am sorry to say, of the British House of Commons has 
been received here to-day by this great sister assembly 
with such kindness as you have shown to me and to my 
friends. 

Ladies and gentlemen, these two assemblies are the 
greatest and the oldest of the free assemblies now govern- 
On May 5, 1917, the "House of Representatives was the scene of a 
great outbreak of patriotism and enthusiasm." For the first time in 
American history a British official spoke in the House. The President 
of the United States and the Justices of the Supreme Court were pres- 
ent, an additional mark of courtesy to the speaker. 

The Right Honorable Arthur James Balfour was born in Scotland, 
July 25, 1848. He was educated at Cambridge and holds honorary 
degrees from ten or more great universities on the Continent. He 
became a member of Parliament in 1874 and held the Prime Minister's 
portfolio from 1902 to 1905. 

In April, 1917, he was nominated to head the British Mission to the 
United States, with the object of establishing greater cooperation be- 
tween the two countries in the prosecution of their war against Ger- 
many. At the time of his visit to America Mr. Balfour was Secre- 
tary of State for Foreign Affairs. 

146 



ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR 147 

ing great nations in the world. The history of the two is 
very different. The beginnings of the British House of 
Commons go back to a dim historic past and its full rights 
and status have only been conquered and permanently 
secured after centuries of political struggle. 

Your fate has been a happier one. You were called 
into existence at a much later stage of social development. 
You came into being complete and perfected, and all your 
powers determined and your place in the constitution 
secured beyond chance of revolution; but, though the 
history of these two great assemblies is different, each of 
them represents the great democratic principle to which 
we look forward as the security for the future peace of 
the world. 

All of the free assemblies now to be found governing 
the great nations of the earth have been modeled either 
upon your practice or upon ours or upon both combined. 

Mr. Speaker, the compliment paid to the mission from 
Great Britain by such an assembly and upon such an 
occasion is one not one of us is ever likely to forget ; but 
there is something, after all, even deeper and more sig- 
nificant in the circumstances under which I now have 
the honor to address you than any which arise out of the 
interchange of courtesies, however sincere, between two 
great and friendly nations. 

We all, I think, feel instinctively that this is one of the 
great moments in the history of the world, and that what 
is happening on both sides of the Atlantic represents the 
drawing together of great and free peoples for mutual 
protection against the aggression of military despotism. 

I am not one of those — none of you are among those 
— who are such bad democrats as to say that, democracies 
make no mistakes. All free assemblies have made blun- 
ders; sometimes they have committed crimes. Why is 



148 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

it then that we look forward to the spirit of free institu- 
tions, and especially among our present enemies, as 
one of the greatest guarantees of the future peace of the 
world ? I will say to you, gentlemen, how it seems to me. 

It is quite true that the people and the representatives 
of the people may be betrayed by some momentary gust 
of passion into a policy which they ultimately deplore, 
but it is only a military despotism of the German type 
that can, through generations, if need be, pursue steadily, 
remorselessly, unscrupulously, and appallingly the object 
of dominating the civilization of mankind. 

And, mark you, this evil, this menace under which we 
are now suffering is not one which diminishes with the 
growth of knowledge and progress of material civiliza- 
tion, but on the contrary it increases with them. 

When I was young, we used to flatter ourselves that 
progress inevitably meant peace, and that growth of 
knowledge was always accompanied as its natural fruit 
by the growth of good will among the nations of the 
earth. Unhappily we know better now, and we know 
there is such a thing in the world as a power which can, 
with unvarying persistence, focus all the resources of 
knowledge and of civilization into the one great task of 
making itself the moral and material master of the world. 

It is against that danger that we, the free peoples of 
western civilization, have banded ourselves together. 

It is in that great cause that we are going to fight and 
are fighting at this very moment side by side. In that 
cause we shall surely conquer ; and our children will look 
back to this fateful date as the one from which democ- 
racies can feel secure that their progress, their civiliza- 
tion, their rivalry, if need be, will be conducted, not on 
German lines, but in the friendly and Christian spirit 
which really befits the age in which we live. 



ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR 149 

Mr, Speaker, ladies and gentlemen, I beg most sin- 
cerely to repeat again how heartily I thank you for the 
cordial welcome which you have given us to-day, and to 
repeat my profound sense of the significance of this 
unique meeting. 



CHAMPIONS OF LIBERTY 

Prince Udine 

the vice president 

Senators, it will perhaps rejoice you hereafter to re- 
member that within a very few days you have had the 
honor and pleasure of participating in three great historic 
scenes. For myself, I may say that I am very glad the 
distinguished visitors and myself both belong to posterity 
rather than to ancestry, for I have a historic recollection 
that some 1900 years ago the ancestors of these distin- 
guished gentlemen were pursuing through the islands 
of Britain my ancestors, clad in sheepskin. 

I am glad that I have lived in a time when the eagles 
of the Senate and people of Rome come in peace to visit 
the American eagle in the Senate of the United States. 
(Applause.) 

History sometimes reverses itself and sometimes 
repeats itself. When Rome stood exclusively for power 
and sought to bring the habitable globe under her control, 
she never quite succeeded in conquering the Belgian 
people. Nineteen hundred years after that failure the 
Roman people have concluded that what Rome as the 
representative of power could not do, no other represen- 
tative of power shall ever be permitted to do. (Applause.) 

History repeats itself in another instance. When I 

Given at the reception of the Italian Commission in the United 
States Senate on May 31, 1917. Mr. Marshall's speech is given as a 
happy introduction. 

150 



PRINCE UDINE 151 

was trying to ascertain the history of this great people, 
digging it out of the original, I learned, as I pronounce 
it in the Hoosier vulgate, that one of the great Romans 
closed each of his addresses in the Roman Senate with 
this remarkable statement: "Ceterum censeo Cartha- 
ginem esse delendam." History, I hope, again repeats 
itself in that the people of the seven-hilled city beside the 
yellow Tiber have resolved that for themselves and for 
humanity the house of Hapsburg must be destroyed. 
(Loud applause.) 

It is my honor and my pleasure to present to you the 
representative of the people of Italy, the Prince of Udine. 
(Loud applause.) 

ADDRESS BY PRINCE UDINE 

Mr. President and gentlemen of the Senate, I consider 
it a great honor for the mission of His Majesty, the King 
of Italy, to be welcomed by the American Senate; it is 
also a great honor for me, and a source of deep satisfaction, 
to greet you on behalf of my country and to speak in 
this glorious assembly, which has never forgotten the 
noble traditions of democracy and the principles of 
liberty, in the name of which it was constituted. 

In this hour of danger, in which military absolutism is 
threatening every one, there are nations that have for- 
gotten old and new rivalries, and have united to de- 
feat this menace to the common safety. We are in a 
more fortunate position. Between the United States of 
America and Italy there has never been any cause of 
conflict. Therefore, in your history and in ours there is 
no page which should be forgotten in this hour of brother- 
hood. In our present alliance we need not forget any 
war, nor any rivalry, nor any strife. If nothing brings 



152 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

men closer together than to fight for the same ideals, 
and to face the sufferings and the dangers of a great 
war for the cause of justice and of humanity, we must 
acknowledge that this new and closer union means for 
us a greater bond of sympathy and solidarity in addition 
to those which already linked us. 

This long friendship without strife, this union without 
mistrust, this cloudless future, are enhanced by the fact 
that both our peoples are at war, not because of any 
imminent danger that threatened us, but to defend the 
same ideals of humanity and justice. (Applause.) 

Your wars have been fought for independence and for 
liberty, and your heroes have been men such as George 
Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln 
— human heroes, shining lights of the intellect, who 
looked with a kindly heart even upon their adversaries. 
(Applause.) 

We, too, after having suffered greatly at the hands of 
foreign oppressors, have won liberty and independence; 
and our heroes, the men who gathered around Victor 
Emmanuel II, and gave Italy unity and freedom, were 
men such as Cavour, Garibaldi, Mazzini, champions of 
idealism, men who belonged to humanity rather than to 
their own country, pure glories of the world's democracy. 
(Applause.) 

Italy, gentlemen of the Senate, entered into the war 
with aims equal to those which you pursue. Her terri- 
tory had not been invaded, her insecure boundaries had 
not been violated. Our people understood that the sacri- 
fice of free nations was the prelude to their own sacrifice, 
and that we could not remain indifferent without denying 
the very reasons of our existence. (Applause.) 

Italy has suffered more than any other nation in 
Europe the horror of foreign domination, the martyrdom 



PRINCE UDINE 153 

of invasion and pillage ; and, therefore, she will never for- 
get the principles which presided over her birth and 
which constitute her strength and her defense. 

Italy wants the safety of her boundaries and her coasts, 
and she wants to secure herself against new aggressions. 
Italy wants to deliver from long-standing martyrdom 
populations of Italian race and language that have been 
persecuted implacably, and are nevertheless prouder than 
ever of their Italian nationality. (Applause.) 

But Italy has not been and never will be an element of 
discord in Europe ; and as she willed her own free national 
existence at the cost of any sacrifice, so she will con- 
tribute with all her strength to the free existence and 
development of other nations. 

The mission of which I have the honor to be the head, 
and in which there are representatives of the Senate of 
the Kingdom, of the Chamber of Deputies, and members 
of the Government, desires to express through me the 
liveliest sympathy to the representatives of the American 
people. (Applause.) 

The message of your President, as our sovereign has 
said, is worthy, by the nobility of its conceptions and the 
dignity of its form, to rank with the most inspiring pages 
in the history of ancient and immortal Rome. (Applause.) 
It was greeted with the enthusiasm of faith when it made 
clear the objects of the war and defined the aims of 
American action. Our soldiers, at the foot of the snowy 
Alps, amid the atrocious life of underground trenches; 
our sailors, defying the treacherous warfare of the sub- 
marines ; the populations of France and of Belgium, 
suffering under the most cruel servitude, could not read 
it without a profound emotion. . 

By proclaiming that right is more precious than peace ; 
that autocratic governments, supported by the force of 



154 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

arms, are a menace to civilization ; by affirming the 
necessity of guaranteeing the safety of the world's democ- 
racies ; by proclaiming the right of small nations to live 
and to prosper, America has now, through the action of 
her President, acquired a title of merit which history will 
never forget. (Applause.) 



LIBERTY OR DEATH 

Baron Moncheur 

the vice president 

Senators, since that far-off, unrecorded hour when 
our ancestors began their slow westward movement, un- 
numbered and unremembered, thousands have died upon 
the field of battle for love, for hate, for liberty, for con- 
quest, as freemen or as slaves. Every note in the gamut 
of human passion has been written in the anvil chorus of 
war. Many have struck the redeeming blow for their 
own country, but few have unsheathed their swords with- 
out the hope of self-aggrandizement. It remained for 
little Belgium to write in the blood of her martyred sons 
and daughters a new page in the annals of diplomacy, 
to inscribe thereon that the dishonor of a people is the ag- 
gregate of the selfishness of its citizens ; that the honor 
of a people is the aggregate of the self-sacrifice of its citi- 
zens ; that treaties are made to be kept, not broken ; 
that a people may dare to walk through "the valley of 
the shadow of death," touching elbows with their convic- 
tions, but that they dare not climb to the mountain tops 
of safety if thereby they walk over the dead bodies of 
their high ideals ; that a people may safely die if thereby 
they can compel an unwilling world to toss upon their 
new-made graves the white lily of a blameless life. 

Given at the reception of the Belgian Commission in the United 
States Senate, June 22, 1917. Mr. Marshall's introductory remarks 
are especially graceful. 

155 



156 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

Here, Senators, ends all I know, and here begins what 
I believe : Belgium shall arise. The long night of her 
weeping shall end; the morning of a day of joy shall 
break over her desolated homes, her devastated fields, 
and her profaned altars. When it breaks, humanity 
will learn that when mankind gambles with truth and 
honor and humanity, the dice of the gods are always 
loaded. (Applause.) 

To me, in all profane history, there is no sadder, sweeter, 
sublimer character than Sidney Carton. Dreamer of 
dreams, he walked his lonely, only way. In all the his- 
tory of nations there is no sadder, sweeter, sublimer story 
than the story of Belgium. Doer of deeds, she, too, has 
walked her lonely, only way — the via dolorosa that 
leads to duty, death, and glory. Out of the depths and 
across the deeps the representatives of the remnant of 
her people and the guardians of her honor have come to us 
this day. 

I present to you the chairman of that mission, Baron 
Moncheur. (Applause.) 

ADDRESS BY BARON MONCHEUR 

Mr. President and gentlemen of the Senate, when 
some years ago I had the honor of representing the Gov- 
ernment of my King in the United States, I often came 
to the Senate, where I hstened with deep interest to the 
debates of your distinguished body. In those times I 
never thought that some day it would be my privilege 
to speak from this historic tribune. 

When the Vice President was kind enough to ask me 
to address the Senate, I admit that at first I hesitated 
to accept his gracious invitation. 

How should I dare to speak in this Chamber, which has 
resounded to the eloquence and wisdom of so many dis- 



BARON MONCHEUR 157 

tinguished statesmen whose utterances from this tribune 
have changed the history of the world ? 

How should I venture to address this body to which 
the distinction, the talent, and the wisdom of its mem- 
bers have given a unique place among the legislative 
assemblies of the world? 

If, gentlemen, I have finally succeeded in overcoming 
this natural hesitation, it is only because of my great 
desire to express, as well as my words will permit, the 
gratitude and admiration which the whole Belgian nation 
feels toward the American people and toward their 
Government. 

You all know the unspeakable evils which have be- 
fallen my unfortunate country — the unprovoked invasion 
accompanied by a deliberate system of terror, the burn- 
ing of many of our thriving cities and of innumerable 
villages, the massacre of thousands of our peaceful citi- 
zens, the pillage and devastation of our country. 

Then followed the iron hand of foreign domination, 
enormous war contributions exacted from all the nine 
Provinces of Belgium, ruinous requisitions of all sorts 
from our people, the seizure of the raw material of indus- 
try, and even the theft of our machinery which was sent 
into the country of our enemy for his own use, so that 
now the silence of death reigns in our industrial centers 
which before had been the most active in Europe. 

You also know, gentlemen, the way in which this 
regime of oppression has been carried out — eighty 
thousand Belgians condemned, in one year, to various 
penalties for having displeased the invader; as, for ex- 
ample, the noble burgomaster of Brussels, who has been 
in imprisonment for the past two years for trying to up- 
hold the principle of civic liberty which for centuries has 
been so dear to all Belgians. 



158 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

You have learned also of the deportation of our work- 
men into Germany — a crime the horrors of which, ac- 
cording to the opinion of one of your countrymen, should 
cause more indignation throughout the entire world 
than all the previous outrages against the sacred princi- 
ples of justice and of humanity. 

But Belgium, even in the midst of the terrible misfor- 
tunes which have been brought upon her by her fidelity 
to treaties and by respect for her plighted word, does not 
regret her decision, and there is not a single Belgian worthy 
of the name who does not now, as on the first day of war, 
approve the judgment of our Government that it is better 
to die, if need be, rather than to live without honor. 
Like Patrick Henry, all Belgians say, "Give me liberty 
or give me death." (Applause.) 

This sentiment will be shared by all the citizens of the 
great American Nation, who responded with such enthu- 
siasm and with such unanimity to the noble words of 
your President when, in terms which held the world 
spellbound, he proclaimed the imprescriptible right of 
justice over force. 

The courage of my fellow-countrymen has been strength- 
ened, also, by the sympathy for our misfortunes which 
has been manifested throughout your great land. Ameri- 
can initiative has bestowed most generous help upon 
our starving population, and, in offering from this trib- 
une the expression of gratitude of every Belgian heart, 
I wish also to render special homage to that admirable 
organization, the commission for relief in Belgium, which 
has done so much to save our people from starvation. 
(Applause.) 

Yes, gentlemen, the sympathy of America gives us 
new courage; and while King Albert, who since the 
fateful day when our territory was violated, has remained 



BARON MONCHEUR 159 

steadfastly at the front, continues the struggle with in- 
domitable energy at the head of our army intrenched upon 
the last strip of our soil that remains to us ; while the Queen, 
that worthy companion of a great sovereign, expends 
her unceasing efforts to comfort and relieve the victims 
of battle, exciting enthusiasm by her contempt for the 
danger to which she exposes herself day by day ; on the 
other side of the enemy's line of steel stands the Belgian 
people, bowed beneath the yoke but never conquered, 
maintaining its unshaken patriotism in spite of the seduc- 
tions of the enemy as well as in spite of his iron rule; 
the Belgian people, a martyr whose courage is upheld by 
our great Cardinal Mercier, awaits silently in the sacred 
union of all parties the final hour of deliverance. (Great 
applause.) 

That hour, gentlemen, will, I am convinced, be mate- 
rially hastened by the powerful aid of the United States, 
and the time approaches when Belgium, restored to full 
and complete independence, both politically and eco- 
nomically, will be able to thank in a fitting manner all 
those who have aided her to emerge from the darkness of 
the tomb into the glorious light of a new life. (Prolonged 
applause.) 



SLAVES OR FREEMEN? 
Alexander Kerensky 

Two months have elapsed since the birth of Russian 
freedom. I did not come here in order to greet you. 
Our greetings have been dispatched to your trenches 
long since. Your pains and your sufferings were one of 
the motives that precipitated the revolution. We could 
no longer endure the imbecile lavishness with which 
the old order spilled your blood. I believed throughout 
the two months that the only power which could save 
our country and lead her on the right path was the con- 
sciousness of responsibility for every word and every act 
of ours — a responsibility resting on every one of us. 
This belief I still hold. 

Comrades, soldiers and officers, I well know what your 
feelings are there in the trenches, but I also know what 
is going on here. Possibly the time is near when we shall 
have to say to you, "We cannot give you all the bread 
which you have a right to expect of us and all the ammu- 
nition on which you have a right to depend"; but this 
will come about through no fault of those who two months 
ago assumed before the tribunal of history and the whole 
world the formal and official responsibility for the honor 
and glory of our country. 

Spoken in May, 1917, to the representatives of the soldiers who 
came from the front to Petrograd. Kerensky, called Russia's "Man of 
the Hour," undertook for months the superhuman task of reconciling 
the discordant elements in "free Russia." 

160 



I 



ALEXANDER KERENSKY 161 

The situation of Russia at present is complex and 
difficult. The process of transformation from slavery 
to liberty does not, of course, assume the form of a pa- 
rade. It is a difficult and painful work, full of misconcep- 
tions, mutual misunderstandings, which prepare a field 
for cowardice and bad faith, turning free citizens into 
human dust. 

The time of isolated countries is past. The world has 
long since become one family, which is frequently torn 
asunder by internal struggles, but which is nevertheless 
bound together by strong ties — social, economic, and 
cultural. 

Should we, as contemptible slaves, fail to organize 
into a strong nation, then a dark, sanguine period of 
internal strife will surely come, and our ideals will be 
cast under the heels of that despotic rule which holds 
that might is right and not that right is might. Every 
one of us, from the soldier to the minister, and from the 
minister to the soldier, can do whatever he pleases, but 
he must do it with eyes wide open, placing his devotion 
to the common ideal above all else. 

Comrades, for years we have suffered in silence and 
were forced to fulfill duties imposed upon us by the old 
hateful might. You were able to fire on the people when 
the government demanded that of you. And how do we 
stand now ? Now we can no longer hold out ! What does 
it mean? Does it mean that free Russia is a nation of 
rebellious slaves? (Uneasiness all over the hall.) 

Comrades, I can't — I don't know how I can tell the 
people untruths and conceal from them the truth ! 

I came to you because my strength was giving way, 
because I am no longer conscious of my previous courage. 
I no longer have the confidence that we are facing not 
rebellious slaves, but conscious citizens engaged in the 



162 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

creation of a new Russia and going about their work 
with an enthusiasm worthy of the Russian people. 

They tell us that the front is no longer a necessity; 
fraternizing is going on there. Do they fraternize on 
the French front? No, comrades. If we fraternize, 
then why not fraternize on both sides? Have not the 
forces of our adversary been transported to the Anglo- 
French front? And has not the Anglo-French offensive 
been already halted? As far as we are concerned, there 
is no such thing as a Russian front; there is but one 
front, and that is an Allied front. 

We are marching toward peace, and I should not be a 
member of the Provisional Government were it to dis- 
regard the will of the people as far as ending the war 
goes; but there are roads wide open and there are nar- 
row, dark alleys, a stroll through which might cause one 
to lose both his life and honor. We want to hasten the 
end of this fratricidal war ; but to this end we must march 
across the straight open road. 

We are not an assembly of tired people; we are a 
nation. There are paths. They are long and complex. 
We are in need of an enormous amount of perseverance 
and calm. If we propose new war aims, then it behooves 
us to conduct ourselves so as to command the respect 
of both friend and foe. No one respects a weakling. 

I regret that I did not die two months ago. I would 
have died then happy with the dream that a new life 
had been kindled in Russia ; hopeful of a time when we 
could respect each other without resorting to the knout ; 
hopeful that we could rule our Empire, but not as it was 
ruled by our former despots. 

This is all, comrades, that I care to say. It is, of 
course, possible that I am mistaken. The diagnosis 
that I have made may turn out to be incorrect, but I 



ALEXANDER KERENSKY 163 

think I am not so much in error as would appear to others. 
My diagnosis is : If we do not immediately realize the 
tragedy and hopelessness of the situation ; if we do not 
concede that the immediate responsibility rests on all ; 
if our political organism will not work as smoothly as a 
well-oiled mechanism, then all that we dreamed of, all 
to which we are striving, will be cast years back and 
possibly drowned in blood. I want to believe that we 
will find the solution for our problems, and that we will 
march forward along the bright and open road of democ- 
racy. 

The moment has come when every one must search 
the depths of his conscience in order to realize whither 
he himself is going and whither he is leading those who, 
through the fault of the old government which held the 
people in darkness, regard every printed word as law. It 
is not difficult to play with this element, but the game is 
apt to be overplayed. 

I came here because I believed in my right to tell the 
truth as I understand it. People who even under the 
old regime went about their work openly and without 
fear of death, those people, I say, will not be terrorized. 
The fate of our country is in our hands. The country is 
in great danger. We have sipped of the cup of liberty 
and we are somewhat intoxicated. But we are not in 
need of intoxication; we are in need of the greatest 
possible sobriety and discipline. We must enter history 
so that they may write on our graves: "They died, but 
they were never slaves." 



II 



AMERICA GREETS THE RUSSIAN REPUBLIC 
WooDROw Wilson 

We are fighting for the Hberty, the self-government, 
and the undictated development of all peoples, and every 
feature of the settlement that concludes this war must be 
conceived and executed for that purpose. Wrongs must 
first be righted and then adequate safeguards must be 
created to prevent their being committed again. We 
ought not to consider remedies merely because they have 
a pleasing and sonorous sound. Practical questions can 
be settled only by practical means. Phrases will not 
achieve the result. Effective readjustments will, and 
whatever readjustments are necessary must be made. 

But they must follow a principle, and that principle is 
plain. No people must be forced under sovereignty 
under which it does not wish to live. No territory must 
change hands except for the purpose of securing those 
who inhabit it a fair chance of life and liberty. No 
indemnities must be insisted on except those that consti- 
tute payment for manifest wrongs done. No readjust- 
ments of power must be made except such as will tend to 
secure the future peace of the world and the future wel- 
fare and happiness of its peoples. 

And then the free peoples of the world must draw 
together in some common covenant, some genuine and 
practical cooperation that will in effect combine their 

Delivered by Ambassador Francis to the Russian Government at 
Petrograd, June 11, 1917. 

164 



WOODROW WILSON 165 

force to secure peace and justice in the dealings of nations 
with one another. The brotherhood of mankind must no 
longer be a fair but empty phrase; it must be given a 
structure of force and reality. The nations must realize 
their common life and effect a workable partnership to 
secure that life against the aggressions of autocratic and 
self-pleasing power. 

For these things we can afford to pour out blood and 
treasure. For these are the things we have always pro- 
fessed to desire, and unless we pour out blood and treas- 
ure now and succeed, we may never be able to unite or 
show conquering force again in the great cause of human 
liberty. The day has come to conquer or submit. If the 
forces of autocracy can divide us, they will overcome us ; 
if we stand together, victory is certain and the liberty 
which victory will secure. We can afford then to be 
generous, but we cannot afford then or now to be weak 
or to omit any single guaranty of justice and security. 



THE VOICE OF AMERICAN LABOR 

Samuel Gompers 

The gravest crisis in the world's history is now hanging 
in the balance and the course which Russia will pursue 
may have a determining influence whether democracy or 
autocracy shall prevail. That democracy and freedom 
will finally prevail there can be no doubt in the minds of 
men who know, but the cost, the time lost, and the sac- 
rifices which would ensue from lack of united action may 
be appalling. It is to avoid this that I address you. 
In view of the grave crisis through which the Russian 
people are passing we assure you that you can rely abso- 
lutely upon the whole-hearted support and cooperation 
of the American people in the great war against our com- 
mon enemy, kaiserism. In the fulfilment of that cause 
the American government has the support of ninety-nine 
per cent of the American people, including the working 
class of both the cities and of the agricultural sections. 

In free America as in free Russia the agitators for a 
peace favorable to Prussian militarism have been allowed 
to express their opinions, so that conscious and uncon- 
scious tools of the kaiser appear more influential than 
they really are. You should realize the truth of the 
situation. There are but few in America willing to allow 
kaiserism and its allies to continue their rule over those 

President Samuel Gompers of the American Federation of Labor 
sent this message by cable to the Executive Committee of the Russian 
Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Deputies, May 6, 1917. 

166 



SAMUEL GOMPERS 167 

non-German peoples who wish to be free from their dom- 
ination. Should we not protest against the pro-kaiser 
Socialist interpretation of the demand for " no annexation," 
namely, that all oppressed non-German peoples shall be 
compelled to remain under the domination of Prussia 
and her lackeys, Austria and Turkey? Should we not 
rather accept the better interpretation that there must be 
no forcible annexations, but that every people must be 
free to choose any allegiance it desires, as demanded by 
the council of workmen's and soldiers' deputies ? 

Like yourselves, we are opposed to all punitive and 
improper indemnities. We denounce the onerous pu- 
nitive indemnities already imposed by the kaiser upon 
the people of Servia, Belgium, and Poland. 

America's workers share the view of the council of 
workmen's and soldiers' deputies, that the only way in 
which the German people can bring the war to an early 
end is by imitating the glorious example of the Russian 
people, compelling the abdication of the Hohenzollerns 
and the Hapsburgs and driving the tyrannous nobility, 
bureaucracy, and the military caste from power. 

Let the German Socialists attend to this and cease 
their false pretenses and underground plotting to bring 
about an abortive peace in the interest of kaiserism and 
the ruling class. Let them cease calling pretended "in- 
ternational" conferences at the instigation or connivance 
of the kaiser. Let them cease their intrigues to cajole 
the Russian and American working people to interpret 
your demand "no annexation, no indemnities," in a way 
to leave undiminished the prestige and the power of the 
German military caste. 

Now that Russian autocracy is overthrown, neither 
the American government nor the American people 
apprehend that the wisdom and experience of Russia in 



168 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

the coming constitutional assembly will adopt any form 
of government other than the one best suited to her 
needs. We feel confident that no message, no individual 
emissary, and no commission has been sent or will be sent 
with authority to offer any advice whatever to Russia 
as to the conduct of her internal affairs. Any commis- 
sion that may be sent will help Russia in any way that 
she desires to combat kaiserism, wherever it exists or 
may manifest itself. 

Word has reached us that false reports of an American 
purpose and of American opinions contrary to the above 
statement have gained some circulation in Russia. We 
denounce these reports as the criminal work of desperate 
pro-kaiser propagandists circulated with the intent to de- 
ceive and to arouse hostile feelings between the two 
great democracies of the world. The Russian people 
should know that these activities are only additional 
manifestations of the "dark forces" with which Russia 
has been only too familiar in the unhappy past. 

The American government, the American people, the 
American labor movement are whole-heartedly with the 
Russian workers, the Russian masses, in the great effort 
to maintain the freedom you have already achieved, and 
to solve the grave problems yet before you. 

We earnestly appeal to you to make common cause 
with us to abolish all forms of autocracy and despotism, 
and to establish and maintain for generations yet unborn 
the priceless treasures of justice, freedom, democracy, and 
humanity. 



A GRAVE SITUATION 

Ambassador Bakhmetieff 
the vice president 

Senators, the kaleidoscope of current history is being 
turned so rapidly that to the normal eye the combina- 
tions of yesterday are forgotten, of to-day are uncertain, 
and of to-morrow are unknown. And yet as from time 
to time there are unfolded in this most sacred and his- 
toric spot portions of the panorama of the greatest tragedy 
that has been enacted since Calvary there stands out one 
clear-cut central figure, the figure of the dauntless and 
undaunted man who dares to draw his sword either to 
preserve or to obtain for himself and for his fellows the 
right of self-government, the heritage of life, of liberty, 
and of the pursuit of happiness. It matters but little to 
us the feature and the form of that man, his lineage or 
his language, if he speak in the full and confident tones 
of a manhood, or in the lisping tongue of infantile pos- 
session of those rights. But if we hear from his lips the 
golden rule of statecraft, then he is our brother. He has 
a right to be, and he has a right to be here. 

We are honored this day by the representatives of a 
people who have been our long-time and unvarying 
friends. It is not possible for me to think in the terms of 

Spoken at the reception of the Russian Commission in the United 
States Senate, June 26, 1917. It was preceded by another of Mr. 
Marshall's graceful introductions. 

169 



170 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

countries and continents and governments. My mind 
thinks only in the terms of men ; and perhaps this is as 
it should be, for the Goddess of Liberty is not always a 
strong and virile woman. In the hours of peace she be- 
comes pale and anemic, and it is oftentimes necessary to 
keep her alive by transfusing into her veins the blood of 
patriotic and self-sacrificing men. 

I cannot think of France, of England, of Italy, of 
America ; I think only of Viviani and Joffre, of Balfour 
and Haig, of Udine and Cadorna, of Wilson and Pershing. 
On this day as I look into the eyes, the storm-tossed eyes, 
of these our guests, I cannot think of Russia as the land 
of Alexander and Nicholas. She seems to me to be only 
the home of Kropotkin and of Tolstoi. 

Travelers tell us that there is a point in Iceland where 
the rays of the setting and of the rising sun mingle. 
Already upon the far-flung eastern battle line of Europe 
the rays of the setting sun of autocracy have mingled 
with the rays of the rising sun of democracy. May that 
sun grow in light and warmth, and may it be undimmed 
by the clouds of internal dissension. May democracy 
everywhere understand that its first duty is to make a 
democrat a free man everywhere on earth. (Applause.) 

Last week we went with little Belgium sadly to her 
Gethsemane ; to-day let us go gladly, with mighty Russia, 
to her Mount of Transfiguration. (Applause.) 

I present to you the chairman of this commission, Mr. 
B. A. Bakhmetieff. 

ADDRESS BY AMBASSADOR BAKHMETIEFF 

Mr. President and gentlemen of the Senate, at the out- 
set permit me to express to you sincere thanks and keen 
appreciation for the warm reception you have so gra- 



AMBASSADOR BAKHMETIEFF 171 

ciously given to the members of the mission and to 
myself. Great is the honor you have bestowed by per- 
mitting me to address your distinguished body, abrogating 
thus a custom which has been upheld for more than a 
century, but still more gratifying is the expression of 
cordial sympathy and friendly feeling which has been 
so manifestly exhibited by your reception. 

That bonds of friendship and sympathy united the 
people of the two nations we knew before we departed 
from Russia. They were amply manifested during the 
early days of the revolution. The act of prompt recog- 
nition of our new Government has been of incalculable 
value. For the brotherly encouragement which you 
gave us, and for the noble manner in which you so gener- 
ously stretched forth a helping hand, we are here, in 
behalf of the new Russia, to express to you our deepest 
and most heartfelt gratitude. (Applause.) 

At this moment all eyes are turned on Russia. Many 
hopes and many doubts are raised by the tide of events 
in the greatest of revolutions at an epoch in the world's 
greatest war. Justifiable is the attention, lawful the 
hopes, and naturally conceivable the anxiety. The fate 
of nations, the fate of the world is at stake, all dependent 
on the fate of Russia. Freedom and peace will be the 
blessings of the future if Russia happily emerges from the 
struggle a powerful democracy, sparkling with the gal- 
lantry of her army returning from fields won in common 
strife with her allies. (Great applause.) 

I am not going to conceal the gravity of the situation 
that confronts the Russian Provisional Government. 
The revolution called for the reconstruction of the very 
foundations of our national life. It is not easy to com- 
prehend what it means to reorganize all of Russia on 
democratic lines. Such work involves the whole of our 



172 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

social, economic, and political relations. The entire 
State structure is affected by the changes, involving vil- 
lage, district, county ; in fact, every part from the small- 
est to the central State. The creation anew of a coun- 
try of boundless expanse on distinctly new principles 
will, of course, take time, and impatience should not be 
shown in the consummation of so grand an event as 
Russia's entry into the ranks of free nations. 

There has been a period, closely following the revolu- 
tion, of almost total suspension of all military activity, 
a period of what appeared to be disintegration of the 
army, a period which gave rise to serious doubts and to 
gloomy forebodings. At the same time there ensued un- 
limited freedom of speech and of the press, which afforded 
opportunities for expression of the most extreme and 
anti-national views, from all of which resulted widespread 
rumors throughout the world that Russia would aban- 
don the war and conclude a separate peace with the 
central powers. 

With all emphasis and with the deepest conviction, 
may I reiterate the statement that such rumors were 
wholly without foundation in fact. Russia rejects with 
indignation any idea of separate peace. (Prolonged 
applause.) What my country is striving for is the estab- 
lishment of a firm and lasting peace between democratic 
nations. Russia is firmly convinced that a separate 
peace would mean the triumph of German autocracy, 
would render lasting peace impossible, create the greatest 
danger for democracy and liberty, and ever be a threaten- 
ing menace to the new-born freedom of Russia. (Ap- 
plause.) 

Peaceful in its intentions, striving for a lasting peace 
based on democratic principles and established by demo- 
cratic will, the Russian people and its army are rallying 



AMBASSADOR BAKHMETIEFF 173 

their forces around the banners of freedom, strengthen- 
ing their ranks in cheerful self-consciousness; to die, 
but not to be slaves. (Great applause.) 

Russia wants the world to be safe for democracy. 
To make it safe means to have democracy rule the world. 
(Prolonged applause.) 



WHY ARE WE FIGHTING GERMANY? 
Franklin K. Lane 

Why are we fighting Germany? The brief answer is 
that ours is a war of self-defense. We did not wish to 
fight Germany. She made the attack upon us, not on 
our shores, but on our ships, our lives, our rights, our 
future. For two years and more we held to a neutrality 
that made us apologists for things which outraged man's 
common sense of fair play and humanity. 

At each new offense — the invasion of Belgium, the 
killing of civilian Belgians, the attacks on Scarborough 
and other defenseless towns, the laying of mines in neutral 
waters, the fencing off of the seas — and on and on through 
the months we said : "This is war — archaic, uncivilized 
war, but war. All rules have been thrown away; all 
nobility. Man has come down to the primitive brute, 
and while we cannot justify we will not intervene. It is 
not our war." 

Then why are we in? Because we could not keep 
out. The invasion of Belgium, which opened the war, 
led to the invasion of the United States, by slow, steady, 
logical steps. Our sympathies evolved into a conviction 
of self-interest. Our love of fair play ripened into alarm 
at our own peril. 

And so we came into this war for ourselves. It is a 
war to save America, to preserve self-respect, to justify 

This address was given by the Secretary of the Interior, before the 
Home Club of the Department of the Interior, Washington, D.C., 
June 4, 1917. 

174 



FRANKLIN K. LANE 175 

our right to live as we have lived, not as some one else 
wishes us to live. In the name of freedom we challenge 
with ships and men, money and an undaunted spirit, 
that word "verboten" which Germany has written upon 
the sea and upon the land. For America is not the 
name of so much territory. It is a living spirit, born in 
travail, grown in the rough school of bitter experiences, 
a living spirit which has purpose and pride, knows why 
it wishes to live and to what end, knows how it comes to 
be respected by the world, and hopes to retain that re- 
spect by living on with the light of Lincoln's love of man 
as its old and new testament. 

With this background of history and in this sense, 
then, we fight Germany : 

Because of Belgium — invaded, outraged, enslaved, 
impoverished Belgium. We cannot forget Li^ge, Louvain, 
and Cardinal Mercier. Translated into terms of Ameri- 
can history these names stand for Bunker Hill, Lexing- 
ton, and Patrick Henry. 

Because of France — invaded, desecrated France, a 
million of whose heroic sons have died to save the land 
of Lafayette. Glorious golden France, the preserver of 
the arts, the land of noble spirit. The first land to fol- 
low our lead into republican liberty. 

Because of England — from whom came the laws, 
traditions, standards of life, and inherent love of liberty 
which we call Anglo-Saxon civilization. We defeated her 
once on the land and once upon the sea. But Australia, 
New Zealand, Africa, and Canada are free because of 
what we did. And they are with us in the fight for the 
freedom of the seas. 

Because of Russia — new Russia. She must not be 
overwhelmed now. Not now, surely, when she is just 
born into freedom. Her peasants must have their chance ; 



176 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

they must go to school to Washington, to Jefferson, and 
to Lincoln, until they know their way about in this new, 
strange world of government by the popular will. 

And because of other peoples, with their rising hope that 
the world may be freed from government by the soldier. 

We are fighting Germany because she sought to ter- 
rorize us and then to fool us. We could not believe that 
Germany would do what she said she would do upon the 
seas. 

We still hear the piteous cry of children coming up out 
of the sea where the Lusitania went down. And Ger- 
many has never asked forgiveness of the world. 

We saw the Sussex sunk, crowded with the sons and 
daughters of neutral nations. 

We saw ship after ship sent to the bottom — ships of 
mercy bound out of America for the starving Belgians; 
ships carrying the Red Cross and laden with the wounded 
of all nations ; ships carrying food and clothing to friendly, 
harmless, terrorized peoples ; ships flying the Stars and 
Stripes — sent to the bottom hundreds of miles from 
shore, manned by American seamen, murdered against 
all law, without warning. 

We are fighting Germany because she violated our 
confidence. Paid German spies filled our cities. Officials 
of her government, received as the guests of this nation, 
lived with us to bribe and terrorize, defying our law and 
the law of nations. 

We are fighting Germany because while we were yet 
her friend — the only great power that still held hands 
off, — she sent the Zimmermann note, calling to her aid 
Mexico, our southern neighbor, and hoping to lure Japan, 
our western neighbor, into war against this nation of 
peace. 

We are fighting Germany because in this war feudalism 



FRANKLIN K. LANE 177 

is making its last stand against oncoming democracy. 
We see it now. This is a war against an old spirit, an 
ancient, outworn spirit. It is a war against feudalism 
— the right of the castle on the hill to rule the village 
below. It is a war for democracy — the right of all to 
be their own masters. Let Germany be feudal if she 
will ! But she must not spread her system over a world 
that has outgrown it. FeudaHsm plus science, thirteenth 
century plus twentieth — this is the religion of the mis- 
taken Germany that has linked itself with the Turk — 
that has, too, adopted the method of Mahomet. "The 
state has no conscience." "The state can do no wrong." 
With the spirit of the fanatic she believes this gospel and 
that it is her duty to spread it by force. 

With poison gas that makes living a hell, with sub- 
marines that sneak through the seas to murder slyly 
non-combatants, with dirigibles that bombard men and 
women while they sleep, with a perfected system of terror- 
ization that the modern world first heard of when Ger- 
man troops entered China — German feudalism is mak- 
ing war upon mankind. 

Let this old spirit of evil have its way and no man 
will live in America without paying toll to it in manhood 
and in money. This spirit might demand Canada from 
a defeated, navyless England, and then our dreams of 
peace on the north would be at an end. We would live, 
as France has lived for forty years, in haunting terror. 

America speaks for the world in fighting Germany. 
Mark on a map those countries which are Germany's 
allies and you will mark but four, running from the 
Baltic through Austria and Bulgaria to Turkey. All 
the other nations, the whole globe around, are in arms 
against her or are unable to move. There is deep mean- 
ing in this. 



178 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

We fight with the world for an honest world, in which 
nations keep their word ; for a world in which nations do 
not live by swagger or by threat; for a world in which 
men think of the ways in which they can conquer the 
common cruelties of nature instead of inventing more 
horrible cruelties to inflict upon the spirit and body of 
man ; for a world in which the ambition of the philosophy 
of a few shall not make miserable all mankind ; for a 
world in which the man is held more precious than the 
machine, the system, or the state. 



FREE FROM THE GERMAN YOKE 
Max F. Meyer 

I AM thoroughly famihar with the present organiza- 
tion of the German social body and with its culmination, 
the present German government. I have lived in Ger- 
many twenty-five years. I was born there. I was 
educated there. I spent nineteen years of my life in 
German educational institutions, from the kindergarten 
to the research laboratory. 

I confess that at the beginning of this war my sym- 
pathies were divided. The German nation had many 
justifiable complaints against its neighbors. But what- 
ever wrongs the German nation may have suffered in the 
past from other nations, the German government during 
this war has had more than one opportunity to have them 
set right and to terminate the war. Its actions show that 
world domination, not justice, is its aim. I sympathize 
with the German people, but not with their government. 
Perhaps you would appreciate your American citizenship 
better if, hke me, you had been born and brought up in 
Germany. 

If Germany wins this war, fifty years hence its govern- 
ment will rule the American people. I do not want my 
American children to be put under the yoke which I 
escaped by coming to America. 

From a letter from Professor Meyer of the University of Missouri 
to the People's Council of America for Democracy and Peace, August 
13, 1917. 

179 



180 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

My hope is that the German government will be over- 
thrown and that the German nation, my relatives and 
friends, will enter an international organization for peace 
and justice. But the German government, this fearful 
danger to our future, can be overthrown only by raising 
armies, not by sitting around the council table and work- 
ing for the repeal of the conscription laws. 



THE GERMAN-AMERICAN 
Hans Zinsser 

There are those among us who have been brought up 
in the best German tradition. They have been taught 
from childhood the Hterature and music of Germany. 
They have studied in her universities and have taken 
grateful pride in memories of their immediate forefathers. 
But all this has been ploughed under by the policy of 
merciless and materiahstic efficiency with which a harsh 
and bureaucratic government has succeeded in hypnotiz- 
ing a whole people. 

Under these circumstances, who can have a stronger 
desire to see the German military power defeated than 
we? This is our 76. Perhaps we feel about it much as 
the colonists felt when they gathered about the arsenal in 
Concord. They were Enghsh far more than we are Ger- 
man, yet they fought because of their inherent sense of 
Hberty. In the same way there are men and women of 
German lineage in this country who resent the policy 
of the present ruling German group much more than is 
possible for Americans of pure Anglo-Saxon blood. We are 
in this war, heart and soul, not only because our adopted 
country has declared war, not only because of Belgium, of 
Serbia, of the Lusitania, of the U-boats, of the Mexican 
plot — sufficient reasons in themselves — but in addition 
to all this we believe it- is for us to redeem in as far as we 
may the blot upon the memories of our fathers. 

Professor Hans Zinsser, who comes of old-fashioned German liberal 
stock, appeared at the opening of the Columbia University College of 
Physicians and Surgeons the other day wearing the uniform of a major 
in the United States army. His address explains. This is taken from 
the Chicago Tribune of October 1, 1917. 

181 



THE MENACE OF PRUSSIANISM 
Otto H. Kahn 

I SPEAK as one who has seen the spirit of the Prussian 
governing class at work from close by, having at its 
disposal and using to the full practically every agency 
for molding the public mind. 

I have watched it proceed with relentless persistency 
and profound cunning to instil into the nation the 
demoniacal obsession of power-worship and world- 
dominion, to modify and pervert the mentality, indeed 
the very fiber and moral substance of the German people 
— a people which until misled, corrupted, and systemati- 
cally poisoned by the Prussian ruling caste, was, and 
deserved to be, an honored, valued, and welcome member 
of the family of nations. 

I have hated and loathed that spirit ever since it came 
within my ken many years ago, hated it all the more as 
I saw it ruthlessly pulling down a thing which was dear 
to me, the old Germany to which I was linked by ties of 
blood, by fond memories and cherished sentiments. 

The difference in the degree of guilt as between the 
German people and their Prussian or Prussianized rulers 
and leaders, for the monstrous crime of this war and the 
atrocious barbarism of its conduct, is the difference be- 

This address was made in late September, 1917, before the Chamber 
of Commerce at Harrisburg, Pa. Mr. Kahn is a member of the bank- 
ing firm of Kuhn, Loeb & Co. He is of German parentage, but his 
sentiments are those of millions of loyal German-Americans throughout 
the whole country. 

182 



OTTO H. KAHN 183 

tween the man who, acting under the influence of a poi- 
sonous drug, runs amuck in mad frenzy, and the unspeak- 
able malefactor who administered that drug, well knowing 
and fully intending the ghastly consequences which were 
bound to follow. 

The world fervently longs for peace. But there can 
be no peace answering to the true meaning of the word, 
no peace permitting the nations of the earth, great and 
small, to walk unarmed and unafraid, until the teaching 
and the leadership of the apostles of an outlaw creed shall 
have become discredited and hateful in the sight of the 
German people, until that people shall have awakened to 
a consciousness of the unfathomable guilt of those whom 
they have followed into calamity and shame, until a 
mood of penitence and of a decent respect for the opinions 
of mankind shall have supplanted the sway of what Presi- 
dent Wilson has so trenchantly termed "truculence and 
treachery." 

God grant that the German people may before long 
work out their own salvation and find the only road 
which will give to the world an early peace and lead 
Germany back into the family of nations from which it is 
now an outcast. 

From each of my visits to Germany for twenty-five 
years, I came away more appalled by the sinister trans- 
mutation Prussianism had wrought amongst the people, 
and by the portentous menace I recognized in it for the 
entire world. 

It had given to Germany unparalleled prosperity, 
beneficent and advanced social legislation, and not a few 
other things of value, but it had taken in payment the 
soul of the race. It had made a "devil's bargain." 

And when this war broke out in Europe, I knew that 
the issue had been joined between the powers of brutal 



184 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

might and insensate ambition on the one side and the 
forces of humanity and Hberty on the other, between 
darkness and hght. 

Many there were at that time — and amongst them 
men for whose character I had high respect and whose 
motives were beyond any possible suspicion — who said 
their own and America's duty was strict neutrahty, men- 
tally and actually, but personally I believed from the 
beginning of the war, whether we liked all the elements 
of the Allies' combination or not — and I certainly did 
not like the Russia of the Czars — that the cause of the 
Allies was America's cause. 

I believed that this was no ordinary war between 
peoples for a question of national interest or even national 
honor, but a conflict between fundamental principles and 
ideas; and so believing, I was bound to feel that the 
natural lines of race, blood, and kinship could not be the 
determining lines for one's attitude and alignment, but 
that each man, whatever his origin, had to decide accord- 
ing to his judgment and conscience on which side was the 
right and on which was the wrong and take his stand 
accordingly, whatever the wrench and anguish of the deci- 
sion. And thus I took my stand three years ago. 

But whatever one's views and feelings, whatever the 
country of one's birth or kin, only one course was left for 
all those claiming the privilege of American citizenship 
when by action of the President and Congress the cause 
and the fight of the Allies was formally made our cause 
and our fight. The duty of loyal allegiance and faithful 
service to his country, even unto death, rests, of course, 
upon every American. 

But if it be possible to speak of a comparative degree 
concerning what is the highest as it is the most elemen- 
tary attitude of citizenship, that duty may almost be 



OTTO H. KAHN 185 

said to rest with an even more solemn and compelling 
obligation upon Americans of foreign origin than upon 
native Americans. For we Americans of foreign ante- 
cedents are here not by the accidental right of birth, 
but by our own free choice for better or for worse. 

We are your fellow-citizens because you accepted our 
oath of allegiance as given in good faith, and because you 
have opened to us in generous trust the portals of Ameri- 
can opportunity and freedom, and you have admitted 
us to membership in the family of Americans, giving us 
equal rights in the great inheritance which has been 
created by the blood and the toil of your ancestors, ask- 
ing nothing from us in return but decent citizenship and 
adherence to those ideals and principles which are sym- 
bolized by the glorious flag of America. 

Woe to the foreign-born American who betrays the 
splendid trust which you have reposed in him ! Woe 
to the German-American, so-called, who, in this sacred 
war for a cause as high as any for which ever people took 
up arms, does not feel a solemn urge, does not show an 
eager determination to be in the very forefront of the 
struggle, does not prove a patriotic jealousy, in thought, 
in action, and in speech, to rival and to outdo his native- 
born fellow-citizen in devotion and in willing sacrifice 
for the country of his choice and adoption and sworn 
allegiance and of their common affection and pride. 

As Washington led Americans of British blood to fight 
against Great Britain, as Lincoln called upon Americans 
of the North to fight their very brothers of the South, 
so Americans of German descent are now summoned to 
join in our country's righteous struggle against a people 
of their own blood which, under the evil spell of a dreadful 
obsession, and, Heaven knows, through no fault of ours, 
has made itself the enemy of this peace-loving nation, 



186 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

as it is the enemy of peace and right and freedom through- 
out the world. 

To gain America's independence, to defeat oppression 
and tyranny, was indeed to gain a great cause. To 
defend the very foundations of Hberty and humanity, 
the very groundwork of fair deahng between nations, 
the very basis of peaceable living together among the 
peoples of the earth against the fierce and brutal onslaught 
of ruthless, lawless, faithless might ; to spend the lives 
and the fortunes of this generation so that our descendants 
may be freed from the dreadful calamity of war and the 
fear of war, so that the energies and millions and billions 
of treasure now devoted to plans and instruments of 
destruction may be given henceforth to fruitful works of 
peace and progress and to the betterment of the conditions 
of the people — that is the highest cause for which any 
people ever unsheathed its sword. 



THE BASIS FOR ENDURING PEACE 
WooDROW Wilson 

Every heart that has not been bHnded and hardened 
by this terrible war must be touched by this moving ap- 
peal of his Holiness the Pope ; must feel the dignity and 
force of the humane and generous motives which prompted 
it, and must fervently wish that we might take the path 
of peace he so persuasively points out. But it would be 
folly to take it if it does not in fact lead to the goal he 
proposes. 

Our response must be based upon the stern facts, and 
upon nothing else. It is not a mere cessation of arms he 
desires ; it is a stable and enduring peace. This agony 
must not be gone through with again, and it must be a 
matter of very sober judgment what will insure us against 

it. 

His Holiness, in substance, proposes that we return to 
the status quo ante helium, and that then there be a 
general condonation, disarmament, and a concert of 
nations based upon an acceptance of the principle of 
arbitration ; that by a similar concert freedom of the seas 
be established, and that the territorial claims of France 
and Italy, the perplexing problems of the Balkan states, 
and the restitution of Poland be left to such concihatory 
adjustments as may be possible in the new temper of 
such a peace, due regard being paid to the aspirations of 

Reply of President Wilson to the peace note of Pope Benedict XV, 
signed, as is customary, by the Secretary of State. 

187 



188 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

the peoples whose poHtical fortunes and affihations will 
be involved. 

It is manifest that no part of this program can be suc- 
cessfully carried out unless the restitution of the status 
quo ante furnishes a firm and satisfactory basis for it. 

The object of this war is to deliver the free peoples of 
the world from the menace and the actual power of a 
vast military establishment controlled by an irresponsible 
government which, having secretly planned to dominate 
the world, proceeded to carry the plan out without regard 
either to the sacred obligations of treaty or the long 
established practices and long cherished principles of 
international action and honor ; which chose its own time 
for the war, delivered its blow fiercely and suddenly, 
stopped at no barrier either of law or of mercy, swept a 
whole continent within the tide of blood — not the blood 
of soldiers only but the blood of innocent women and 
children also, and of the helpless and the poor — and now 
stands, balked but not defeated, the enemy of four fifths 
of the world. 

This power is not the German people. It is the ruth- 
less master of the German people. It is no business of 
ours how that great people came under its control or sub- 
mitted with temporary zest to the domination of its 
purpose, but it is our business to see to it that the history 
of the rest of the world is no longer left to its handling. 

To deal with such a power by way of peace, upon the 
plan proposed by his Holiness the Pope, would, so far as 
we can see, involve a recuperation of its strength and a 
renewal of its policy ; would make it necessary to create 
a permanent hostile combination of nations against the 
German people, who are its instruments, and would result 
in abandoning the new-born Russia to the intrigue, the 
manifold subtle interference, and the certain counter- 



WOODROW WILSON 189 

revolution, which would be attempted by all the malign 
influences to which the German government has of late 
accustomed the world. 

Can peace be based upon a restitution of its power or 
upon any word of honor it could pledge in a treaty of 
settlement and accommodation? 

Responsible statesmen must now everywhere see, if 
they never saw before, that no peace can rest securely 
upon political or economic restriction meant to benefit 
some nations and cripple or embarrass others, upon vin- 
dictive action of any sort, or any kind of revenge or 
deUberate injury. 

The American people have suffered intolerable wrongs 
at the hands of the Imperial German government, but 
they desire no reprisal upon the German people, who 
have themselves suffered all things in this war, which 
they did not choose. America believes that peace should 
rest upon the rights of peoples, not the rights of govern- 
ments — the rights of peoples great or small, weak or 
powerful — their equal right to freedom and security 
and self-government and to a participation upon fair 
terms in the economic opportunities of the world — the 
German people of course included, if they will accept 
equality and not seek domination. 

The test, therefore, of every plan of peace is this : Is 
it based upon the faith of all the peoples involved, or 
merely upon the word of an ambitious and intriguing 
government on the one hand and a group of free peoples 
on the other? This is the test which goes to the root of 
the matter ; and it is the test which must be applied. 

The purposes of the United States in this war are 
known to the whole world — to every people to whom the 
truth has been permitted to come. They do not need to 
be stated again. We seek no material advantage of any 



190 THE FORUM OF DEMOCRACY 

kind. We believe that the intolerable wrongs done in 
this war by the furious and brutal power of the Imperial 
German government ought to be repaired, but not at the 
expense of the sovereignty of any people — rather a vin- 
dication of the sovereignty both of those that are weak 
and of those that are strong. 

Punitive damages, the dismemberment of empires, 
the establishment of selfish and exclusive economic 
leagues, we deem inexpedient and in the end worse than 
futile, no proper basis for a peace of any kind, least of all 
for an enduring peace. That must be based upon jus- 
tice and fairness and the common rights of mankind. 

We cannot take the word of the present rulers of Ger- 
many as a guaranty of anything that is to endure, unless 
explicitly supported by such conclusive evidence of the 
will and purpose of the German people themselves as the 
other peoples of the world would be justified in accepting. 

Without such guaranties, treaties of settlement, agree- 
ments for disarmament, covenants to set up arbitration in 
the place of force, territorial adjustments, reconstitutions 
of small nations, if made with the German government, 
no man, no nation, could now depend on. 

We must await some new evidence of the purposes of 
the great peoples of the central powers. 

God grant it may be given soon and in a way to restore 
the confidence of all peoples everywhere in the faith of 
nations and the possibility of a covenanted peace. 



INDEX OF AUTHORS 



Archer, William 

Eviva L' Italia . . . . , 

AsQuiTH, Herbert Henry 

England Unsheathes the Sword 
The Plain Dictates of Our Duty 
Toast to Italy and Signer Salandra 

Bakhmetieff, Ambassador 

A Grave Situation ... 

Balfour, Arthur James 

At the Tomb of Washington 
The Oldest Free Assemblies 

Benedict XV, Pope 

Plea for Peace .... 

Brent, Bishop 

Comrades in a Common Cause . 

Churchill, Winston Spencer 
Now the War Has Come . 

D'Annunzio, Gabriele 

America, a Beacon Light of Peace 
Deschanel, Paul 

France and the New Commandments 

France United in the Cause of Right 

Greetings from a Sister RepubUc 
De Wiart, Henry Carton 

Belgium's Plea to the President . 

Belgium's Debt to France . 
Doumic, Rene 

The Soldier of 1914 (Extract I) . 

The Soldier of 1914 (Extract II) . 

France, Anatole 

Address to the Fighters of France 
191 



42 

1 
12 
69 

170 

142 
146 

56 

129 



121 

84 
101 
118 



14 
19 

38 



192 



INDEX 



GoMPERS, Samuel 

The Voice of American Labor 
Grey, Edward 

Allies' Conditions of Peace 

Joffre, Marshal 

Tribute to George WasMngton 
JoNEscu, Take 

A Struggle between Two Worlds 

Kahn, Otto H. 

The Menace of Prussianism 
Kerensky, Alexander 

Slaves or Freemen ? . 



Lane, Franklin K. 

Why Are We Fighting Germany ? 
Lloyd George, David 

There Must Be No Delay 

It Can Be Done 

England's Answer 

Message to America . 

America Enters the War 



Maeterlinck, Maurice 

The War's Legacy of Hatred 

The Day of the Dead 
Marshall, Thomas R. 

Introducing Prince Udine , 
Baron Moncheur 
Ambassador Bakhmetieff 
Mercier, Cardinal 

Belgium Shall Rise 
Meyer, Max F. 

Free from the German Yoke 
Moncheur, Baron 

Liberty or Death 



Page, Walter Hines 

Great Days for the Republic 
Parker, Gilbert 

America's Part . 



INDEX 



193 



PoiNCARE, Raymond 

The R61e of France in This War 
Verdun . . . . . 
France Congratulates America . 

RiBOT, M. 

Greetings from a Sister Republic 
RoDziANKO, Michael 

Russia's Heart .... 
Roosevelt, Theodore 

The Flag on the Firing Line 

The Rights of Mankind 
Rosen, Baron 

The Significance of the Conflict 

Salandra, Antonio 

Toast to Premier Asquith . 

Thomas, Albert 

Democracy and the War 

Udine, Prince 

Champions of Liberty 

ViviANi, Rene Raphael 
Certainty of Victory . 
France Gives You Greeting 
At the Tomb of Washington 
Our Heritage of Liberty 

Wilson, Woodrow 

Reply to Belgium's Plea 

America for Humanity 

A League for Peace 

America Breaks with Germany 

War Message 

America Greets the Russian Republic 

The Basis for Enduring Peace . 

Zangwill, Israel 

The War and the Jews 
Zinsser, Hans 

The German-American 



75 

78 

112 

116 

46 

134 
137 

72 

67 

106 

151 

22 
131 
140 
143 

10 
35 
96 
104 
109 
164 
187 

49 
181 



ENGLISH 

Effective English 

By P. P. Claxton, United States Commissioner of Education, and 
James McGinniss, Principal of the High School, Ludlow, Kentucky, 
i2mo, cloth, 584 pages. Price, ;jSi.25. 

EFFECTIVE ENGLISH is a complete text-book in rhetoric 
covering every phase of secondary English. 

Realizing the importance of enthusiasm in the work in English 
the authors have set out to secure the pupils' interest at the start 
and to hold it to the end. The variety, vigor, and definiteness 
of the presentation will attract young pupils. 

The book is distinctly literary in character ; quotations from 
the best writers abound in its pages. The authors hold that the 
most practical English is learned from the best models. In 
choosing these models preference has been given to those which 
have permanent literary value. Special attention is given, and 
frequent references are made, to the great folk-epics of the Greeks, 
Germans, and Northmen. 

Over half the book is devoted to practice. Every rule and 
principle is carefully illustrated, and ample drill is afforded to fix 
it in the pupil's mind. 

The exercises cover the whole range of school activity from 
the interests of classical schools with their emphasis on Latin 
and Greek traditions to the commercial school with its stress 
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variety of boy and girl, whether they are interested in art, bird- 
lore, pageantry, or the " movies." 

The book is illustrated with handsome half-tones, which are 
made the basis of work in composition. 

Effective English is divided into six parts, thoroughly discuss- 
ing all forms from the elements of effective speaking and writing 
to the finer points of effective style and criticism. Part VI treats 
of Grammar. 

The Appendix deals with Preparation of Manuscript, Punctua- 
tion and Capitalization, and Suggestions to Teachers. 

102 



ENGLISH 

Public Speaking : A Treatise on Delivery with Se- 
lections for Declaiming 

By Edwin D. Shurter, Associate Professor of Oratory in the Uni- 
versity of Texas. i2mo, cloth, 265 pages. Price, 90 cents. 

THIS book treats chiefly of persuasive speaking, and the au- 
thor lays stress on the fact that mental qualities, such as 
clearness, simplicity, vivacity, spontaneity, and sincerity, are of 
chief value in declamation. Although this principle is counted 
fundamental, the book has all the necessary rules and principles 
for the technique of public speaking, with exercises for perfecting 
the voice and for overcoming defects of speech. Gesture is treated 
in a very happy way, as the physical expression of earnestness. 
The chapters are : — 

I. The Nature and Basis of VII. Time : Phrasing, Transition. 

Public Speaking. VIII. Force, Climax, Volume. 

II. The Voice. IX. Tone-Color. 

III. Pronunciation and Enuncia- X. Earnestness. 

tion. XI. Physical Earnestness — 

IV. Key. Gesture. 

V. Emphasis. XII. General Suggestions. 

VI. Inflection. XIII. Selections for Practice. 

The Selections for Practice include speeches from Lincoln, 
Roosevelt, Blaine, Grady, John Hay, Woodrow Wilson, Wendell 
Phillips, Henry Watterson, and many others. 

A Drill Book in English 

- Compiled by George E. Gay, Haverhill, Mass, i2mo, cloth, 108 
pages. Price, 45 cents. 

THIS manual will appeal only to teachers who believe that there 
is value in presenting to the pupils specimens of bad English 
for correction. It contains in brief form rules for spelling, punc- 
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8 



ENGLISH 

American Literature 

By Professor ROY BENNETT PACE, of Swarthmore College, Swarth. 
more, Pennsylvania. i2mo, cloth, 289 pages. Price ^i.oo. 

THIS book is the outcome of personal experience with the 
problem of teaching literature to young people. 

No writer is treated unless the student may reasonably be ex- 
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list of names and dates common to manuals of literature. 

No effort has been made to treat very recent writers. It is felt 
that judgment cannot yet be passed on their work and that the 
pupil will already have become familiar with many of them 
through the magazines. 

The author nowhere sacrifices simplicity in an effort at literary 
effect. Too often in text-books in literature, a good chapter is 
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the student's observation and experience. 

Southern literature is given more space than is usual in man- 
uals of this sort. 

No pains have been spared to equip the book with useful and 
practical illustrations. Homes and haunts of authors, manu- 
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Readings in American Literature 

By Professor RoY Bennett Pace, of Swarthmore College, Swarth- 
more, Pennsylvania. i2mo, cloth, 373 pages. Price, ^i.oo. 

ALTHOUGH this book is intended as a companion to the 
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distinctive work of each. 

A feature of the Readings is the prominence given to early 
American writers. This literature is quaint and interesting and 
at the same time affords an excellent model of good English. 

6 



ENGLISH 



Orations and Arguments 

Edited by C. B. Bradley, Professor of Rhetoric in the University of 
California. i2mo, cloth, 385 pages. Price, Ji.oo. 

The following speeches are contained in the book : — 

Burke: Webster: 

On Conciliation with the Col- The Reply to Hayne. 

onies, and Speech before the MaCAULAY 

Flectors at Bristol. On the Reform Bill of 1832. 

Chatham : Calhoun : 

On American Affairs. Qn the Slavery Question. 

Erskine: Seward: 

In the Stockdale Case. Qn the Irrepressible Conflict. 
Lincoln : 

The Gettysburg Address. 

IN making this selection, the test applied to each speech was 
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and to encourage in him habits of self-help and familiarity with 
sources of information. 

Note-taking 

By S. S. Seward, Jr., Assistant Professor of English in the Leland 
Stanford Junior University. i2mo, flexible cloth, 91 pages. Price, 
50 cents. 

THIS book is the result of a number of years' experience in 
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It contains chapters on The Aim in Note-taking, How to Con- 
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